The Aftermath of a Life Threatening Illness

Photo by Nastia Petruk on Unsplash

COVID sent the country into a lockdown and my office were all told to work from home. Dutifully we packed our things up, returned to the comfort of our castles and waited.

Living a relatively sedentary lifestyle didn’t mix well with working from home and resulted in me rising from bed, sitting at my desk for an eight hour day, finishing work and then immediately gaming for the evening. With minor breaks to empty my bladder and walk the six or seven steps to the couch to eat. My inactivity was statuesque.

It should therefore be of no surprise that something inside me broke and while the Doctors would tell me that my illness was “unprovoked”, I put it entirely down to the fact that I just sat, for days on end.

A blood clot travelled from my left calf and took up residence in my right lung. The ER told me it was a chest infection, prescribed a course of anti-biotics and sent me home. 24 Hours later I was hacking up blood and mucus along with the most intolerable pain I can recall having. The ambulance crew looked at each other and said “PE”, the ER ordered an X-ray and I was admitted with a Pulmonary Embolism. Two days later I was home and prescribed with blood thinners for the rest of my life. From what I’ve read, this is a life threatening illness and I was lucky to come out the other side relatively unscathed.

Today, I worry constantly.

A tingle in my leg triggers the fear that it’s happening again. A crackle during a breath sends me into a full on panic attack. I Google symptoms, I research ways to break down blood clots without prescription drugs, double up on blood thinners at the first sign of trouble. In short the situation has sent my fragile mental health into a downward spiral.

Annoyingly I have had so many false alarms that I’m beginning to ignore the symptoms and as my overthinking brethren will know, this can only lead to dark places.

I wish I could tell you that I am no longer the sedentary person I was during COVID. Well, in truth I’m not entirely, I refuse to work from home so am in the office every day but exercise still isn't a thing for me.

What should be the take-aways from this post?

For me, they are certainly that I need to introduce exercise into my life.

I perhaps need to seek some kind of support group to process these fears and apathy.

I need help.