Many of you will know about my health fun and games. And by fun and games I mean multiple deep vein thromboses (DVTs), those cocky little blood clots that keep colonising my left leg. The saga can probably be shorthanded to ‘9 years ago my veins decided that blood flow was overrated and shut up shop’.

Flippancy aside, the chronic pain and mobility difficulties have been horrendous, not to mention the impact on my family. And I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve ended up sobbing mid conference because of the pain of just ‘sitting’. Thankfully, overlooking the ‘unexpected clot incident of 2016‘, I’m generally far more mobile and my limp takes longer to kick in. And my walking stick now only gets broken out for special occasions.

Anyway fast forward to June 2017. I’ve been given the name of a fantastic specialist in London whose expertise may actually help fix me, when it seemed unfixable. (Spoiler, we still don’t know if it is, but let’s hope Thursday’s MRI scan shows something positive). I go for a consultation (which led to the MRI) and the discussion takes an unexpected turn. My consultant is concerned about how psychologically and emotionally difficult vascular problems can be for patients and and invites me (as a Health Psychologist) to help. Somehow.

The first step has been writing an invited commentary for ‘Venous News’, the professional magazine for vascular practitioners. This has been a chance to headline, as a patient and psychologist, the fallout of living with a long term condition. It’s a personal account, but far from unique and certainly mirrored across other conditions. I’m hopeful it helps build understanding of the invisible side of long term ill-health.

The opportunity to be able to use this pretty horrid experience, in a professional capacity, and maybe (*fingers crossed*) have some impact is a luxury many people don’t have.  I hope this is the start of a much longer journey to support patients and those clinicians who clearly care enormously about their patients’ welfare.

You can read the piece online (pg 10) or view as a pdf. Thanks to Mr Stephen Black and Venous News for the invitation.

For more information about DVTs check out @ThrombosisUK