The lurking danger of DVT.

• Author: Bloom, Melanie
• Position: Deep Vein Thrombosis - Medicine & Health

MY PHONE RANG in the middle of the night in April 2003. I was told that David was dead. My heart stopped beating as my whole world went dark. I could not breathe. In that instant my husband's life was gone; my life was altered forever, and the safe and carefree childhood of our three little girls was shattered.

David Bloom was an NBC News correspondent, who, for 15 years, brought his energy and zeal to a diversity of stories ranging from Hurricane Andrew, to the O.J. Simpson trial, to the Sydney and Salt Lake City Olympics, to the tragedy of Sept. 11. He covered three presidential campaigns, served nearly four years as the NBC White House correspondent, and eventually took the job of coanchor for the weekend "Today Show." David traveled to many of the world's danger zones, including Somalia, Bosnia, the West Bank and Gaza Strip, Pakistan, Afghanistan, and, ultimately, Iraq.

In 2003, as the war in Iraq inevitably loomed, David championed the case for reporters to be allowed to live (virtually) with U.S. troops and broadcast from the front lines of the battlefield, thus providing the media theretofore unprecedented access to a war. David also had a technologically ambitious plan to cover the war live, as it unfolded, by developing the "Bloomobile," which, in essence, was a ragged, highly mobile, miniature satellite truck. I can close my eyes and still see the image of David, dust flying and hair whipping in the wind, tiding atop the moving tank as it sped across the desert.

David was embedded with the Third Infantry Division, a unit of soldiers whom he held in the highest regard and affection. He truly bonded with the troops and on phone calls home he regaled me with stories about "his guys" and how "he prayed they all made it out of there in one piece."

I was proud of David's determination to tell the soldiers' story and to bring the reality of war home to the American people but, along with so many other journalist and military families, I was frightened, l prayed he would come back home to us sale and sound. I watched those live reports of his with my heart in my throat, and I developed a deep empathy for what our stoic military families must endure on a daily basis.

David called home nearly every day via satellite phone. One such call came a few days before his death. He spoke in hushed tones. He said his unit had reached the outskirts of Baghdad and he was sleeping outside on the fender of the tank he had been riding. "We have to be...