It all started with a blood clot…
When I was seventeen I woke up one morning, before my school’s athletics day, and found my right leg purple and swollen. By 3pm I was in emergency at my local hospital. By 5pm the doctors were injecting ‘Clexane’, a quick acting blood thinner, into the fat around my stomach area. I remember feeling very confused, especially since the doctors themselves were confused. An active, healthy, seventeen-year-old with no pre-existing conditions presenting to emergency with an obvious blood clot? No long distant flight? No long period of time sitting down?
They even brought in the baby doctors to see what they believed was happening. To see what they could learn from this unexpected patient. None the less, because they knew what the problem was, they could treat me. They would work out the cause later…
If you have ever wondered what a blood clot feels like; it feels like your leg is no longer your leg, but a balloon animal. Everything is stretched to its limit, you feel uncomfortable down to your bone. Knives stab at every nerve ending, telling you one thing, something bad is happening. When a part of you is so very wrong, and there is no escape from this part of you, on top of all the physical pain, there is a powerlessness you feel as well.
I think I spent over a week at the hospital, and over a month and a bit at home recovering. Especially since I got a really bad infection in my hand and arm due to the wound from my catheter becoming infected. My family moved my bed out into the living room in order to keep me company, and my Grandma stayed with us to also keep me company during the day.
An avid reader of fantasy books before this time of my life, you would expect that I was reading, escaping my reality into far off lands with creatures that don’t exist. Ok, yes… I read a little bit, I do love my books. But mostly I was on my laptop, typing away. I’d been given a muse… a character called Trinity…
Her image so profound in my mind, I drew her on a small notepad I still have today. She told me about the world she lived in, the type of crimes she solved, and how she didn’t quite feel like she belonged.
Well I’ve taken her story, written a book and a half on it in the last decade, and I’m currently submitting it to literary agents to try and get her story, her world, published.
I hope to share her story with you all very soon. But I’m currently on Rejection #6. I had some good feedback last time - so am back in the editing phase again.
Wish me luck!
xo A.R.Willow
PS: You might be wondering… Waking up in the morning, but going to emergency at 3pm… Well… The thing is… I did end up going to my school’s athletics day. I wanted to compete in shotput and tug-of-war… Which, by the way, I won in both those events… It was only after the tug-of-war that I called my Mum about my leg hurting and feeling out of breath. Of course “Mum Instinct” kicked in and I was off to the hospital from there. I suppose this is a case of #Teenagelogic ?
