Sometimes I am excessively morbid. And I just don't know; about being alive, if it's going to be for me.
At night I sleep with my cell phone on the pillow next to me. In case, I have to call 911. I leave my bedroom door open at all times, even though my roommates close theirs, making the whole thing somewhat ineffective.
My body is fighting guerilla warfare on me. It won't hit me straight on like a proper illness, so I can't get hospitalized and watched over. Instead I'm told to just sit tight and wait for the daily dose of medicine to work over the next few weeks or months (6 months to be exact). And during this, if I start coughing blood or if I find myself no longer able to breathe, I should go to the emergency room.
Sometimes I get brief stabs of pain at various points in my body. Occasionally my ankles feel like the joints are not quite tight or right. My chest feels heavy and tight, so I have to hold my hand against it to rebalance myself. It all goes away after a few minutes. But it's those few minutes that make me so scared. When I think that the blood clot in my lungs could be getting worse or that it is starting to find its way into my heart and my brain.
The doctors who've seen me don't seem to be particularly worried. The first one sent me home with some medication -- only to have me turn up a few days later in the ER with clots in my lungs. The second two doctors are both sympathetic, but seem to think it'll work out. What makes it hard though is that no one on the internet seems to have a mild reaction to pulmonary embolisms. It's all fire and brimstone. I have a friend who got hospitalized for a week when it was only in her leg. My coworker, Linda, has a husband was in there until he was healthy. Linda also knows two people who died of it.
Maybe I don't have anything to worry about. But that doesn't keep these morbid thoughts out of my head.
