It’s always something…

One of the most difficult things about being chronically ill is that you never know when something new could pop up. In my case, that happened last week, when I went to the emergency room with what I thought was a chest infection. To make a long story short, it wasn’t. I was diagnosed with pulmonary emboli in both lungs and an infarction in my right lung. (Yep, the thing that Dr. House had, only mine is in my lung.) So I quickly emerged into a new world of anticoagulants and doctors with specialties I hadn’t even heard of before.

Needless to say, I’m not in a very good place emotionally right now. I was slowly recovering from the last surgery, and now I feel like I’ve been knocked back about fifty yards. I’m also scared that I’ll wind up with something else; if this could happen out of the blue, what else could go wrong? There’s no definitive answer as to why this happened; blood tests have been mostly inconclusive, and would need to be repeated later on to make sure they’re right. It could be ulcerative colitis related, it could be surgery related, it could just be bad luck. No one knows.

I may eventually post about my hospital stay, but I’m honestly not sure I want to think about it. This whole thing is bringing back the memories of being diagnosed with IBD… fear, confusion, disbelief. Having a new diagnosis is like going through everything all over again. I don’t know if writing about it would help or make things worse. For now, I’m just going to leave it at this: I may not be around much in the next few weeks while I navigate this new situation.