In the swim

Swimming is the answer at the moment. The question is a bit more  difficult to get at, but following a bout of norovirus, broken ribs and a DVT just over a week ago, I've decided that life is worth living. Tried out the ribs and the leg with a bit of gentle swimming three days ago. Upped it a bit yesterday and today I did 35 lengths in bunches of five. That's seven sets by my reckoning. The ribs are still sore, but not so much that I need to stop and the leg and breathing are working fine. The best thing is that I feel great after the exercise. Thirty five lengths was a warm up not so long ago, but just now it is fine. I've got a theory about the DVT... it may be bollocks but no one else has come up with an explanation. Okay, so due to the broken ribs and because I have been sitting around a lot, being an art student, I haven't done very much exercise. Just taking Harvey for walks, going up three flights of stairs now and again and that's it. Usually I am pretty active and the blood is rushing around my system, but it hasn't been doing that for about ten weeks or so. Now my resting heart rate is 48, so my blood gets pumped around the old bod at quite a leisurely rate. Usually this all changes when I start running swimming or cycling, but as I say, that hasn't been happening, so the blood has just been ambling around. My lay man's understanding of a blood clot is that the same sort of process is happening in the vein that happens when you cut your skin. The body creates a scab or a clot with some clever little binding thingys. So with the blood moving slowly through the veins some of it attaches to the wall and the binding thingys get going. A clot forms and gets bigger by this process of binding and eventually blocks the vein. Bits detach from the clot and travel up the vein to the heart and lungs and sometimes the brain... which isn't good news. Now I know there are many factors which can cause clots - the pill,  HRT, sitting in a plane, hereditary factors and the 'I haven't got a clue' answer, so who's to know. The interesting thing is that when I got my first DVT in 2007, I hadn't been active for quite a few weeks due to... yes - an injury. In both cases I had been sitting for about 2 -3 hours , driving and writing an essay.(even art students have to write them.) But I had moved around a bit and it seemed unlikely  to me that these were the only causes.
From now on, in between taking rat poison and getting blood tests, I'm going to be getting some nice, regular exercise.