The Truth Is

The truth is, I was going to write a post about blood clots in the news lately.

The truth is, now did not feel like the right time to share the news updates. What does feel right, is sharing some truths about blood clots and recovering from blood clots. This is my message to you today.

The truth is recovery is hard. Very hard. Recovering from a DVT or PE is not like recovering from a cold, flu, surgery or injury. It is more like recovering from a heart attack, stroke or cancer. There are days when I feel miserable and days when I feel great and no apparent way to know which day will fall where and when. It is hard to plan things, hard to make commitments, hard to get active, hard to eat right and hard to take care of myself. It’s even hard to get out of bed, get dressed, do my hair, go to work and drive my car. There are some days when everything is hard – no matter how simple the task. I’m not the same person I was pre-PE and I can’t ever go back to that person. Experiencing a traumatic situation that also has the potential to be deadly, changes us in a way so that we can never go back to the person we once were. Are we better or worse? I don’t know, but I do know we are different. I think about situations differently since my PE (everything requires extensive thought and weighing of actions vs. reactions); I respond differently since my PE (I am much more emotional and sensitive, if that’s even possible); and I see life differently (it’s too easy to take it for granted, I almost did and I almost didn’t get a second chance at it). The truth is recovery from a DVT and PE is hard.

The truth is this hurts. Along with being hard, recovering from a DVT and PE just hurts. It hurt so bad in the beginning, I was willing to sacrifice a lung and a leg (even while being a runner) to make the pain stop. It hurt to walk, it hurt to breathe – two very basic tasks so many people take for granted. It hurt to talk, to laugh, to hiccup, to sneeze and to put on pants. As time has gone by, the physical pain has lessened for me, but the emotional pain remains. Recovering from a DVT and PE is a very lonely time and the emotional scars of that loneliness and isolation are not so much like scars yet, but more like open wounds. It hurts to have friends and even family not understand what you’re going through, why it’s taking so long to recover and why you can’t do the things you once did. It hurts to always explain why you’re tired, not well or that yes, you’re still recovering from that lung thing that happened to you. It hurts to feel like sometimes no one cares, no one will listen and no one even gets the pain you’re in. The truth is, recovering from a DVT and PE hurts.

The truth is this is scary. I remain highly anxious since my DVT and PE. There are days when I am nearly convinced it is happening again because I feel a pain in my leg or a stab in my lung. There are nights when I can’t sleep because I replay the story of my PE over and over again in my head – I should have known something was not right, I should have gone to the doctor earlier; maybe if I did, I wouldn’t be in so much pain now. There are nights when I wake up from a nightmare or pain and can’t fall back to sleep because what if I don’t wake up again in the morning? Tests, scans, MRI’s, blood draws, doctors’ visits, new diagnosis, hospitalizations – are all scary. Hearing words we don’t understand like INR, D-Dimer, Factor V, APS, oxygen level, warfarin, blood thinner, bilateral, chronic and acute are scary. The truth is, recovering from a DVT and PE is scary.

The truth is you are not alone. When I was first discharged from the hospital, I had never felt so alone. While I had family and a few close friends who supported me through my hospitalization, none of them have experienced a PE. None of them know exactly what it feels like. I knew no one in my personal life who had gone through what I was going through. I turned to the internet for help and found some resources there, but was still lacking in real-life, down-to-earth, recent stories of people who were going through what I was. Most people I came across, like me, had not even heard of a DVT or PE before it happened to them. I wanted to change that and created BCRN within months of my discharge. You are not alone, you are never alone. If you have a question, someone else has the same question. If you have had an experience, emotion or thought, chances are, someone else has also had it. Share, talk, communicate, find us on Facebook, share here or send me a message. This is a network of people who have been or are going through the same pains, fears, anxieties, challenges and triumphs as you. The truth is, you are not alone in recovering from a DVT and PE.

The truth is it does get better. I can’t tell you when and I can’t tell you how – recovery is different for each and every person. What I can tell you is that it does get better. Now two years out from my DVT and PE, I feel remarkably better than I did at a few weeks, a few months and a year. While I still face day-to-day challenges including chronic fatigue, leg pain, difficulty breathing in hot or cold weather, regular intravenous blood monitoring, managing medication and doctors’ appointments, it is better than it was. Progress is slow and improvement feels miniscule at times (maybe because is it), but it does get better. I have to believe it will get better for you too and while we may face new challenges from here on out, I believe in time, we do get better and there is hope for recovery and healing.

Reader Writes In. What is your truth?

There is hope for healing and you are not alone,

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