Bit of a life / medical update

I have been extraordinarily tired and listless lately.

Work is exhausting. It takes out all my motivation. Afternoons and weekends I've just been wasting, plenty I want to do but no willpower left.

Scrolling through social media or compulsively picking at my skin, while constantly frustrated at whatever mental block is stopping me from getting up and actually doing one of the hundreds of projects I WANT to work on.

Thursday night I went to urgent care for pain in my right arm, which seemed to be caused by hours of sitting on my bed scrolling on my phone, with my arm in an extremely awkward bent position.

The doctor initially guessed it was a strained tendon.

Blood test showed high levels of D-dimer. Got an ultrasound.

Initially I was told the ultrasound had found a superficial clot, like the ones I used to get in my legs from standing too long at my job.

But on Friday they called back, saying that after looking at the results more closely they NOW think  it's a deep vein thrombosis.

Cause is uncertain, and probably a combination of multiple factors:

- Too much inactivity in bad ergonomic positions was likely a big contributor. - I suspect I also have some underlying tendency toward clots, based on my previous superficial leg clotting experience from years ago. - I also had a breakthrough case of COVID in June, and there have been reports of increased risk of clots after COVID (even if it happened despite vaccination and masking, as in my case) - I received the bivalent booster last week, and there is speculation that clotting may be a side effect related to that, as well.

So, anyway, I'm on Xarelto now. Apparently MY blood is thicker than blood, and needs to be thinned down.

This is very annoying.

I have very supportive friends helping me with this... and for now my job is tolerant... but I am becoming very aware that I need some drastic changes in my life.