Abrupt reminder of mortality

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For the full story see:
An abrupt reminder of mortality.
Update, week 3 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, week 4 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, week 5 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, week 11 of pulmonary embolism recovery
Update, 12 months after pulmonary embolism
Another reminder of mortality (here we go again)

So last week was interesting.
2 weeks ago, Friday I felt really bad. Didn't have any go in the body at all and got really breathless walking a few hundred meters from my car to the office.
I didn't think much of it, once at the office everything went almost as normal. A little out of breath but nothing that stopped me.
In the afternoon when I walked back to my car, the same out of breath situation came up. So I decided to take it really easy over the weekend.
Saturday, couldn't walk the stairs at home without getting out of breath.
Sunday, the same thing.
Monday, decided to stay home from work. Felt a little better.
Tuesday even better, a little out of breath still. Was able to climb the stairs without any bigger issues. Decided to go to work the next day.

Wednesday, totally out of breath walking from the car to the office. Halfway (halfway is around 100 meters...) I thought about giving up. Somehow I still managed to get to the office and decided to call a doctor. Got a time the same afternoon. Sitting still in my chair was no problems. Walking to the coffee-machine turned out to be a big challenge.
At four in the afternoon I drove to the doctor, who in turn sent me to the bigger hospital for x-rays of my lungs and papers that told me to stay at the emergency room afterwards to wait for the results. The first pictures didn't tell anything, the doctor at the emergency room decided to run a CT scan of my lungs as well. They decided to take me in over the night and rigged me up with mobile ECG unit. At around 1 a'clock in the night a nurse tells me that I have pulmonary embolism in both my lungs and that I was to receive a fragmin shot to prevent future clots. Needless to say I didn't sleep that much that night, at an age of 33 this was not the thing I thought I'd get. Maybe later but not at this moment.

Thursday, not much happens. Talk to a doctor, he tries to get a time for another CT scan but it has to wait a week. Need to stay at least another night for monitoring.

Friday. Get rid of the ECG unit and can move a little more freely.
Walk up and down the corridor really really slow. Get information that I need to start eating a medicine called Xarelto, for 6 months to start with and then they will do a study and decide if I need to eat it for the rest of my life. At least I can continue to work-out normally.
Need to stay another night, doctor prepares papers so that the weekend doctor can send me home during the weekend.
In the evening during routing check, nurse asks me if I tend to have high blood pressure and I told her maybe? Most times when they check I have over. Turns out I'll get pills against that as well, starting immediately..

Saturday, start with Xarelto . Doctor sends me home. On sick leave for 2 weeks.

So.. I don't know. Just feels like a really abrupt reminder of mortality. I don't think that I've managed to process the implications of this fully yet but for starters I need to decide if I'll continue riding my MTB or to sell it. Evidently head injuries are really really bad when eating blood thinners so probably not worth the risk. Maybe buy an adventure bike instead, just stay clean of the single-tracks from now on.

But first. 2 weeks of reading books, sleeping a little extra, taking it easy and posting cat videos online.

Thanks for reading, here's some cat-tax:

For an update after 3 weeks go here.

Until next time: Work to Live, Don’t Live to Work