Deep Vein Thrombosis

In a few hours I'll board a plane and fly approximately 12 hours from AKL to SFO. I've done a lot of 12-hour flights in my lifetime - obviously, living in NZ means you have to fly 12 hours to get to pretty much anywhere else worth going to!!. Apart from the general discomfort and inability to sleep, I've never found this to be too much of a worry - 12 hours of discomfort is a small price to pay for the rewards of travel, after all. And I am not a nervous flyer AT ALL. I actually love turbulence - I think it's like a rollercoaster ride. I'm not worried about being sucked down the aiplane toilets. I never worry about gremlins on the wing. The only slightly weird thing about me as a flyer is that I always think I'm going to get an uncontrollable urge to open the airplane door mid-flight. But I don't worry about that too much either, as a) I've been told it's not possible to do that; b) I haven't done it yet; and c) I have the same kinds of thoughts about throwing stuff off bridges when I walk across them, or jumping up and screaming in the middle of an exam, and I've never done any of those things either (yet).

So, flying long-haul has never too much of a worry - until my recent bout of DVT paranoia, that is. Don't ask why, but a few weeks ago I was convinced that I either had, or was about to have, a DVT in my left leg. It all started when I was walking home one day and felt a slight mucle pain in my calf muscle. It felt like a normal "tight" calf muscle, so I thought nothing of it, until a few days later when I turned on National Radio and they were halfway through a story about DVT in office workers, and the expert being interviewed said "The problem is, it can be hard to notice - it might be as subtle as a pain in the calf".
OMIGOD!! (I thought in my semi-asleep stupor). Convinced I might have DVT, I spent half a day googling it. The more I read, the more paranoid I became. For example, did you know that about half of all patients admitted to hospital with a Pulmonary Embolism had a "silent" (asymptomatic) DVT!! My anxiety lasted about a week and told everyone around me that if i was to suddenly have difficulty breathing, they were to take me to the emergency room ASAP. Meanwhile, the leg pain never returned, and I eventually came to the logical conclusion that I didn't have a DVT. Nevertheless, as a result of my paranoia I have decided for the first time ever I am going to wear those anti-DVT "flight socks". I expect they will be horribly uncomfortable, but (as my frantic internizzle search told me), there is at least one RCT study which proved that they reduce the incidence of DVT.

The peace of mind my flight socks give me will free up my mind to worry about more important things - like how much my travels will be increasing my individual carbon footprint, for example.....