My mum and I are supporting this charity now, that aims to raise awareness of deep vein thrombosis/blood clots as well as aid those suffering through it, called Lifeblood. I was shown the website by someone on Twitter and it's remarkably true.
Every year in the UK, around 25,000 people a year die because of a DVT caused by surgery. Many of these people don't even know what a DVT is until it's too late. It is a very scary thing to have as there is not a single substantial symptom of the problem. For instance, I suffered from fevers of around 102-103 yet the doctors at a hospital I was rushed to said it was pneumonia. My foot, too, was scrutinised by my physiotherapist. He said it was blue, along with my entire right leg, because I wasn't moving around enough after a severe knee injury I suffered. Even the excruciating pain I felt in my chest as the clot entered my heart and traveled to the lung was blamed on my subsiding asthma.
To think that the governments of the UK and America are trying to get people active to combat obesity (which is EXTREMELY minor compared to a DVT) when there are hundreds of thousands of people that have a DVT and just don't know it. It's ridiculous that a 40stone person can get travel insurance when I, only 13 stone (I somehow lost over 3 stone in just under 3 weeks) and have a DVT and pulmonary embolism get rejected by many of the insurance companies!
Hell, half of the statistic in the second paragraph didn't know what a DVT is. Because my mum was in cardiology and suffers from the same problem (a clot traveled through her heart and into her brain, yet suffers with a solidified leg due to the clots) I was lucky. The surgeon who sorted my knee out has practically saved me. He sent me for a CT of my chest because he didn't like the fact I still had a severe pain in my lung. I wouldn't be here if he didn't send me for that scan.
Scarily enough, there are some of us (my mum, grandmother and I are in this group) that posses a gene that causes susceptibility to clotting known as Factor V Leiden. This prevents heart attacks when the clot moves through the heart, and even prevents major strokes when a clot travels to the brain, instead reducing it to a minor stroke. Yet we have to live with the fact that we will be on blood thinners for the rest of our lives. I can tell you now, after a week of being on warfarin, it is a horrible drug to be forced to take.
Hence why we are supporting them. I don't like how a morbidly obese slacker (sorry to any offended, but I say it as I see it) gets treatment to save their life yet an illness as severe as mine can go unnoticed because the doctors aren't bothered with symptoms that follow other illnesses or because they don't know anywhere enough about DVTs and PE. It's sickening and downright scary.
