2024 was a year in which, by random chance, I had a bunch of unrelated health issues happen all at once. I'm still processing all of it, two years later.
It started in November 2023, when I came down with a nasty respiratory virus that lasted the rest of the year. It might have caused one or more of the problems that happened the following year.
I had been having difficulty sleeping for quite some time, so I went for a sleep study in January 2024. I have been to two of them now and I hate them. You are put in a room, they attach all sorts of wires to you, and then they expect you to have a good night's sleep. Good luck with that. The second time I did the sleep study, I didn't get enough sleep for them to get a large enough dataset to analyze my sleep.
After doing my first sleep study, they discovered that I had moderate sleep apnea, so I now had to sleep with a CPAP machine. Some people can use nose plugs to sleep with a CPAP, but my mouth drops open when I sleep, so I need a full face mask for my mouth and nose. It took me months to get used to it and I resented it the whole time. By now, I'm used to the idea that, when I sleep, I look and sound like Darth Vader, but it was an adjustment.
Around that time, I noticed that I was having difficulty breathing when going up hills. I assumed it was related to the respiratory virus, which was still lingering from November. I didn't really pay attention to the problem until, when I was going up two flights of stairs to a doctor's appointment in February, I had to sit down to catch my breath. I also noticed that my blood pressure was also up some. I saw a cardiologist, and he told me that he would bet his shoes that I had asthma. I never saw him again, so I never asked for his shoes.
The problem gradually got worse until, when out for a walk late in February, I had to stop every few steps. My wife took me to the emergency room of Sunnybrook Hospital, where I was admitted and diagnosed with blood clots in both lungs. My wife, understandably, was distressed at hearing the bad news, but I wasn't: I had known that something was wrong, they had found what it was, and maybe now it would get fixed. Happily, this proved to be true - I responded quickly to treatment. The staff at Sunnybrook were awesome - when I was admitted, they told me that I was in good hands, and I was.
I was in the hospital for three nights, which is a story in itself (I'll probably write it up soon). I was only there for a third night because they wanted to make sure that I could climb stairs without difficulty, since my wife and I live in a multi-story townhouse. When I passed that test, they discharged me. As we got into the rideshare to come home, I felt like somebody who had been released from detention; I hadn't seen the outside world since I had gotten in.
When I was discharged from the hospital, I was told that I would recover fully but that I had to be patient - I could do whatever I was capable of doing. At first, I could only walk a couple of blocks before taking a rest. I gradually worked up to longer walks, walks with uphill bits, short bike rides, longer bike rides, and so on.
I went for a followup appointment in May. The pulmonary thrombosis doctor that I met with had a whole slide deck prepared to convince me that I needed to be on a maintenance dose of blood thinner, but I had already reached the conclusion that I was going to be on it, as this was my second occurrence of blood clotting (I had a deep vein thrombosis in my right leg in 2015, which cleared up after six months). He seemed disappointed that he wasn't going to get to show me his slides. At the appointment, I told the doctor that I could not begin to describe how grateful I was to be able to lead an active life after what happened to me. I still am.
Being on blood thinner doesn't affect my life - I don't have any dietary restrictions and I don't bleed worse than normal. I didn't need any followup appointments and I am not considered high risk for further clotting events. I just have to remember to take the pill twice a day - I have an alarm set on my phone to do that for me. I have gotten good at taking a pill container with me when going out for dinner and surreptitiously taking the pill at the right time without anyone noticing.
On to the next: while all this was going on, a bump formed on the top of my head. There was a delay in getting it dealt with, partly because I was dealing with the blood clots and partly because the first dermatologist I was referred to claimed that they did not receive my family doctor's fax and now didn't have room for more patients. When I was referred to a second dermatologist, I was diagnosed with a squamous cell carcinoma, which is a skin cancer that is normally not life-threatening unless it gets into the lymph nodes; it's a long way from the top of my head to any accessible nodes, so this wasn't an issue. This sucker was fairly aggressive, as these things go - it was slightly smaller than a dime, and it quickly filled in the gap left when the dermatologist took a biopsy of it.
A skin surgeon successfully removed the growth and left about a two-inch L-shaped wound in the top of my head; the skin around the growth had been stretched to cover the gap and stitches had been put in to close it. For 48 hours, I had to wear gauze wrapped around my head to keep the bandage over the wound in place. I recall coming out of the office after the surgery - the local anaesthetic hadn't worn off yet, so I wasn't in pain. I went to a pizza place in my neighbourhood and ordered a slice with a giant bandage wrapped around my head. Nobody batted an eye - this is Toronto.
I was warned that the first 24 hours or so after the anaesthetic wore off might be somewhat painful. My doctor told me not to be a hero and offered to prescribe me morphine if I wanted it, which scared me, so I didn't. I made it through with extra-strength Tylenol, but I'd rather not do that again. The wound took a couple of months to heal and required a fair bit of wound care (cleaning the area with a vinegar-based solution and so on); I also had to avoid swimming. I also went on a round of antibiotics for two weeks to clear up infections around the point of the wound. Eventually, the wound healed and the hair around the wound grew back. I still have the dent in my skull.
While at the appointment for the biopsy for the growth on the top of my head, I noticed a pimple-sized spot below my right ear and said, while you're here, why not look at that too? This turned out to be a basal cell carcinoma, which is an even less life-threatening form of skin cancer. But this needed to be removed too. This was painless but required more wound care; it left a scar under my right ear.
That got me up to the summer. In September 2024, on the Labour Day weekend, it suddenly became difficult to chew, as the left side of my mouth got sore. I went to the dentist and discovered that I had an infection underneath my left lower wisdom tooth. He prescribed antibiotics - if they didn't clear it up, I would have to get my two left wisdom teeth removed (if you remove the left lower one, the left upper one has to come out also). Fortunately, it did clear up on its own.
All of this, particularly the sleep issues, left me with a bad case of sleep anxiety. I would dread bedtime, as I would assume that I would not be able to sleep. Sometimes I did anyway, but sometimes it was a self-fulfilling prophecy. After three sleepless nights out of five in November, with a noticeable decline in mood when I was sleepless (which scared me a bit), I went to my family doctor. He prescribed a very low dose of quetiapine, which is a drug that is given in much higher doses to people suffering from bipolar disorder (which I do not but my father did).
As my doctor explained to me, the basic principle is that it stops the brain from racing at night and helps you to fall asleep. It's an off-label treatment but it seems to be working for me - I take one pill at night and then take a second an hour later if the first one didn't work. It hasn't completely cured my insomnia or eliminated my sleep anxiety but it has saved me from a number of sleepless nights since, though not all of them.
One book on insomnia that I looked at suggested that a good approach to insomnia is just to be philosophical about it: every now and again, you're going to have a bad night and not to worry about it - you'll get through it. Paradoxically, adopting this attitude makes you less likely to have insomnia. I'm trying my best.
One last thing: my wife and I got our annual flu and COVID shots in late October 2024. Nine days after this, I caught COVID - it went around the curling club in which we played. I got it but my wife didn't. It might have been because my immune system was stressed from the sleeplessness. As COVID infections go, this was fairly uneventful - I got better after a few days. I have a close relative who is disabled from long COVID, so I'm grateful that didn't happen to me.
OK, I think that's it. It was a lot of stuff - anyone who was willing to sit still long enough to listen to me recount my health issues from that year usually responded with some form of holy shit, OMG, oh wow, or similar. Two years later, I retain a lack of optimism about the future - I'm seemingly always bracing myself for what's next. I also have more than the average amount of hypochondria - I imagine that I have several separate serious illnesses every day. And I have more of a sense of perspective on life - things might be going wrong, but at least I'm healthy. I'm also grateful beyond words that I live in a country (Canada) where medical issues don't cost money.
April 2026