DVT (Deep Vein Thrombosis) DAY 2

So today I was supposed to be in Spain but I am not. Today I am into the second of a DVT and my first day of self-injecting. So it’s a slow start to the day with a muesli breakfast and coffee as I work up the nerve to go and self-stab at 10 o’clock. Apparently keeping to the same time of day is important, although I am already planning to ease it towards a more socially friendly time of day, earlier if possible. I cannot be playing around excusing myself from meetings or anything else to go off to stab myself in some grotty toilet in a corona virus invested world. It isn’t really infested with corona virus, after all three people have died so far in the outbreak which compared to the six hundred people that have died from flu this winter so far is not something to get worked up about. Clearly the toilet paper buying British public’s greatest fear is being isolated without enough of the commodity to survive.

Anyway I go and self-stab. These are thinner syringes and needles this time with a smaller dose of drug. So all I have to do is select the area of flab to pinch and then lance it with the needle at 90 degrees, push the plunger and then release the flab and watch the needle pop out. Sounds easy and in fairness it is, however it is the getting to the point of stabbing that holds the anxiety. I am assuming that given that I have to do this every day for the next six months I will become proficient and if I am lucky, super cool about it. So I find some old alcohol wipes, clean the stab site, pinch the required inch of flab and stick myself. Over and done with, apart from snapping the needle on the syringe cradle and popping the whole lot into the sharps bin.

My partner and I get ourselves organised and we go off to seek a tea room that we believe is near to us. We find tha t it is somewhere we have been before and is a combined tea room and antiques trading post. Rooms and containers full of “antiques” are in the courtyard of a farm and there is a converted stables full of “antiques”. We head for the café and order food and drinks and sit and discuss how we are and I explain about my dandelion clock sense of time and how people have responded to the news about my DVT and the cancelled holiday. Which by the way has been lovely and surprising, many of my friends have told me that I am loved and cared about and offered to help in all sorts of ways from driving to places or teaching me yoga. We eat and talk and eventually drive home.

I check my “patient view” app and find my latest blood test results are in and a busily set about comparing them with my last results. My results are in fact good and yet again my PSA level has remained at 0.4. There is nothing outstanding or worrying in them, no sudden jumps or deviations. I would be doing okay of it wasn’t for the DVT. There is one new test. It looks at glucose levels and it looks like that I am out of the normal range (“not bloody diabetes as well”, is my first thought) but when I read the information about the test it appears that I am in the normal range for someone who is not fasting and has had a meal. Clearly glucose is a more up and down and complex variable than the other tests I am having. So there are going to be new things to learn around this if they keep testing me for it

Glucose is a common type of sugar that is essential for the body. It comes from many types of food as well from common sugar (sucrose). Running high levels of glucose in the blood is damaging, and is called diabetes.

Glucose result	Comments
below 2.5	Dangerously low, may cause confusion and unconsciousness.
3.6-6.0	Normal glucose level when fasting (when you haven’t eaten)
6.1-6.9	A rather high level if fasting (called ‘impaired fasting glucose’), OK after a meal.
7.0+	If fasting, and more than once, diagnostic of diabetes. If 7-11 after a meal (or strictly in a glucose tolerance test, 2 hours after 75g of glucose, glucose = 7.8-11) this is labelled ‘impaired glucose tolerance’.
11+	Too high. Diagnostic of diabetes if it occurs more than once.

In the midst of this my new shoes arrive via Mr Amazon and I try them on. They fit and I am pleased so all I now have to do is get the swelling down on my right ankle and life will, in terms of footwear, be tickerty boo. The early evening is taken up with the blog while my partner thinks about substitute things to do while we are not in Spain and preparing the evening meal. This evening I shall warm my calf and try to relax while I think about the life admin around claiming for our lost holiday and completing a service report. I will also be thinking about how I reorganise my life to get yoga into it and tighten up on my food selections and restrictions.