Trigger Warning: Blood

Many times when I describe the details of my chronic illness, it seems to go right over the head of the person I am talking to. Sometimes it hurts, because they truly have no idea what my life has been like for the last seven years (nor do they seem to care). Other times though it feels like its my own little secret, like I shouldn’t have to explain it anyways. I shouldn’t want to.

But today I am here to bring you back to the start of my journey living with Factor V Leiden (FVL).

FVL is a genetic blood clotting disorder passed down through mutated genes from parent to offspring. Often times, people with FVL have only one parent who carries the gene which results in a less severe form called Factor V Leiden Heterozygous. Unfortunately for me, the stars aligned just right on whatever-the-date-was, 1994, when both of my gene-carrying parents met and fell in love. Since I have a a copy of the gene from each of them, I have a more severe version called Factor V Leiden Homozygous.

Now I’m really not much of a science buff myself, so hopefully that will be the last of the fancy words for a while. But what I will do is break down the last seven years for you to try and paint a better picture of what living with FVL has been like.

I went on birth control when I was 14. There were no questions, no tests, and no blood work. It was a simple medication that millions of woman across the world had been prescribed and I was just another one of them. A year and a half later I never would have expected the damage a side effect of one simple pill could have done to my body and the fact that it would nearly cost me my life and save my life in the same instance.

At 15 years old you don’t exactly expect anything more dramatic than a bad haircut to happen to you. I was a good kid. good grades, good sports player, good life and all of that was fine by me. The summer going into my sophomore year of high school I worked myself to the bone trying to improve my field hockey skills in hopes of making the varsity team. I knew lots of seniors had graduated and that maybe one of their spots could be mine. I loved to run, and I was good at it too. I knew how to pace myself and work my lungs and muscles to improve my stamina in ways that others on my team couldn’t figure out. I decided if I could perfect my two-mile run time then I really might stand a chance securing my varsity letter.

I knew something was up as pre-season rolled around and I couldn’t get myself out of bed to do my morning run. I brushed it off as being overtired and decided to take a few days to rest hoping I could be back to my normal self when double sessions started. The first morning around 7am I got to the field still feeling a little funny. However, I was looking forward to the run and hoped that my few days of rest would benefit me.

It didn’t. In fact I think I ran the worst that day than I had since pee-wee soccer. I was absolutely defeated. How could I go from the front of the line every time to dead last in a matter of weeks? I was exhausted, my breathing was slow and small twinges of pain came and went. Still I tried my best through the rest of the morning and the afternoon.

This continued for three more days and by the end of each session I felt like I had failed myself. After the third day the pain in my lungs became unbearable. I couldn’t sleep that night. I couldn’t stand, sit, lie down, or breath without a stabbing pain throughout my entire ribcage. I watched the sunrise trying to steady my breathing when I heard my brother Sean get up for work. I walked downstairs and cried to him about how much pain I was in. Sean was a varsity captain for 3 out of the 4 years he played soccer in high school. He brushed it off as a pulled muscle, saying he got those all the time. So I sucked it up and off I went to my morning session without a single minute of sleep. It’s just a pulled muscle, right?

That was the morning the clouds rolled in.

I arrived to practice feeling like I could pass out at any moment. I could smell the rain coming and the heavy air didn’t help my lungs any.

“Lets skip the run this morning, ladies.”

Score. Who even was I anymore? Excited for a cancelled run? The thunder cracked my thoughts before I could work through them and we were all sent home.

Things started to get blurry from here on out. I got home and sunk into my couch. Imagine swallowing a steak knife and then having to dig it back out of your side with a machete. I’m not kidding. The worst pain I could ever imagine had somehow got even worse. I felt an overwhelming urge to cough and flung my body up off the couch to grab a tissue. I don’t remember if I screamed from the pain or cried, but as I looked down into a fist full of blood the entire world went silent anyways.

I called my mom. Thats all I remember.

The next thing I knew, I had a needle stuck in one hand, a jell-o in the other and all of my pain was gone.

Morphine is a hell of a drug.

 

Continued in my next blog post: “Part 2: Can I Still Sing?”