You may have noticed a blogging hiatus from me, you see 4 weeks ago I had my first real life ‘adult’ health scare, I was diagnosed with a pulmonary embolism. This health scare has done several things for me, it has changed my perspective on my health, it has changed my perspective on my recovery and it has opened my eyes to how precious life is.
4 weeks ago, on a Sunday night I went to sleep with what I thought was bad indigestion. It kept me up through the night, I felt like I was having a combination of severe indigestion as well as a mild heart attack, except the heart pain was coming from the other side of my chest so I knew it wasn’t my heart.
When I woke up on the Monday morning my chest pain had settled, but it was enough to scare me. I texted a girlfriend who was a nurse and asked her what to do, she said go to the hospital. At first I thought this was a bit melodramatic, but then something in my gut told me that’s where I needed to be.
I bundled up my children, put them in the car and made my way to the emergency room. When I got there, I collapsed at the reception and was immediately rushed through for triage. When I got through triage, they took all of my vitals, drew blood and sent me through to the next room. This is where I was diagnosed with an elevated D-Dimer level in my blood, a key indicator for blood clots.
After some x-ray’s and chest scans I was given a diagnosis of pulmonary embolisms in my chest. I had no idea what a pulmonary embolism was until this day, and now that I do I thank my higher power for helping me. You see an embolism is another word for a blood clot, and pulmonary is in your lungs. A blood clot in your lungs can be fatal because they can go from your lungs and into your heart.
It’s quite scary to think that after the past few months of trying to focus on my health, rid my life of alcohol, try and work on my physical and mental health and then I get a real health scare. It’s extremely confronting to think that after years of abusing alcohol, I get a health scare that is completely unrelated to my alcoholism.
It is an extremely humbling and confronting feeling to have a health scare, especially a health scare where there was a genuine risk of death. Pardon the pun, but it’s incredibly sobering to see your life flash before your eyes, to realise your not invincible and to realise that your life could be taken away at any moment.