joyfully, and with some trepidation, i get to come off the blood thinners i have taken for the last 6 months to help my body avoid another bloodclot after getting one this past july. i am excited to resume some normalcy after the roller coaster ride this past half year has been, but i am also scared to have my security blanket taken away from.
i am a worrier by nature; worrying helps me plan, stay on top of my game by always anticipating every angle and possible outcome. that's very much a function of the analyst in me. nights i spent laying in bed, having trouble falling to sleep when the worries that swirled in my head refused to allow sleep to come, well, i could recite my mantra: "i'm taking bloodthinners, there is nothing that can harm me now" to help me create a safe place in which to let sleep enter.
every morning was greeted with relief that i hadn't succumbed to a wayward clot that lay hidden inside me and shot off to my brain or my lungs killing me in the process. every weird ache or pain is suspect, i was caught offguard with the first bloodclot, i will not be caught offguard again. each twinge or pain is analysed by my brain and categorized - possibly lethal, non-lethal origin identified, or normal dumbass.
i worry, therefore i am. sometimes i feel i teeter on the edge of being a hypochondriac.
how could i have known in september 05 when i created multiplicity that it's meaning would crossover into so many different - and relevant - facets of my life? i couldn't have possibly known what lie ahead. i created multiplicity as a way to capture the stories of the "creative girl living in a buttoned-up world" who just is "too uptight to live 100% in the creative world". how could i have guessed that it would also come to capture my medical dramas as well? the girl who a decade ago was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder for being unable to clot is now the same one who worries her blood will clot too much. i feared bleeding to death a decade ago; in some ironical way, i now fear clotting to death.
before, with my autoimmune disorder ITP (idiopathic thrombocytopenia purpura), i knew its origin was unknown and unpreventable. somehow, this not knowing was more soothing to me than knowing a list of possible source.
with my bloodclot in my leg -- my minor DVT -- as the doctors refer to it, isn't so neatly disclosed as to the source of its origin. it could have been the birth control pills i had taken for the last 12 years of my life. it could be the long 8-hour car ride i had taken days before in combination with air travel a day or two before that. or, it could have been the genetic factor discovered in the blood tests taken at the hospital. factor V leiden is inherited, one of my parents gave me this lovely gift like they gave me blond hair and blue eyes.
it could have been one of these or it could have been all of these. the doctors are unwilling to assign a guilty plea to any of these culprits individually. in the meantime, i have stopped the birth control pills, avoided long periods of inactivity. i have even altered my diet to avoid futures episodes but the one thing i cannot change is my genes. that which makes me who i am and i cannot escape me.
so welcome back, klot-ter. the drugs may be gone but surely there is something that i have learned in all of this. i need to get busy living. just in case i die trying.
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