Landed six hours ago, eleven weeks after abdominal surgery, ten hour flight. Both ankles are like bread dough. I could not get my shoes back on at the end and had to walk through arrivals in socks.
They do not hurt exactly. Just tight. But I have read enough about clots on this forum to have spent the last of the flight quietly panicking, and now I am sitting with my feet on a chair googling things I should not google. Where is the line between normal plane swelling and something I should be phoning about?
Both is the word I would hold onto. Both is usually the boring answer.
Mine did exactly this after a long flight post-op and settled overnight with my legs up. The one that scared me properly was a different trip when it was only the left one and it ached, and that one I did get looked at.
#3August 15, 2026, 8:26 am Deborah, the most useful signal is symmetry, and I want to be precise about why.
Ordinary travel swelling tends to affect both feet and ankles roughly equally, feels tight or achy rather than sharply painful, and eases once you are upright, moving and able to elevate the legs. It has three causes stacked: gravity and stillness let fluid pool in the lower legs, the cabin is pressurised to roughly 6,000 to 8,000 feet with very dry air, and after surgery there is tissue that is still inflamed and holding fluid anyway. Eleven weeks out from abdominal surgery on a ten hour flight, that pattern is common.
A deep vein thrombosis has a different shape. It typically affects one leg and brings pain, swelling, warmth or redness in that calf, often building over hours or days. One-sided swelling with pain needs same-day medical attention, and you should mention both the operation and the flight when you are seen. Sudden breathlessness, chest pain that is worse on breathing in, coughing up blood or feeling faint is an emergency needing urgent help immediately, not a forum post.
Two caveats I would not want you to miss. A travel-related clot can appear in the days and even weeks after a flight, not only during it, so keep half an eye on it for a while rather than declaring yourself clear at the baggage carousel. And if swelling is still increasing two or three days after landing rather than settling, that is worth a call regardless of symmetry. The fuller version is in swelling and oedema on flights after surgery.
What is right for you individually is a question for your own GP or surgical team, and if anything about it does not sit right, ring them rather than waiting to see.
Thank you. Both, tight, no pain, and this morning they are noticeably down. So I will watch rather than panic, and I will keep watching for a few weeks rather than assuming I am past it.
Take your shoes off at the start of the flight, not at hour eight when they are never going back on. Learned that the hard way in a pair of boots.
And do not do the thing of drinking less so you do not have to get up. I did that on one flight thinking I was being clever and it was the worst my legs have ever been. Dehydration makes it worse, and the walk to the toilet is basically the only reason most people stand up at all.
I always assumed the swelling and the clot thing were completely separate problems. Did not realise the same list of habits helps both. That reframes it a bit, because moving and drinking water suddenly feels less like fussing.
Three days on and they are back to normal ankles. Posting the update because I have read a lot of threads on here that stop at the panic and never say what happened.
