Deep vein thrombosis: emotional and spiritual meaning

What a deep vein thrombosis is

Phlebitis, in ordinary speech, means a clot blocking a vein, most often in the leg. In a deep vein that clot is a deep vein thrombosis. Immobility, a plaster cast, varicose veins, and blood that clots too readily all make it more likely. The leg swells, hurts, and warms. If a piece of the clot reaches the lung, breathing becomes the emergency. Anticoagulant medicine is the treatment. A wish to stay still does not form the clot, and deciding to be happy does not dissolve it.

The emotional meaning of a deep vein thrombosis

Blood is read as the free circulation of life. In the legs, that current is what carries you towards the different destinations of a life. When it blocks, the means of going forward feel limited, irritated, and faulty. Spiritually, this is a loss of joy tied to the legs. Phlebitis is placed after a brutal event that brings a great incomprehension and limits freedom.

The French line about biting someone until the blood comes is an idiom for fury. It is anger with nowhere to go, not a scene you are asked to enact. Another picture in the pages, of having to hold up a partner whose mood is always low, is one way joy gets spent on someone else. It is not a wife's task, and it is not the cause of a clot. The left leg is heard as the inner life, the right as the outer one. If one leg or both are affected, the question is where you hesitate, or refuse, to accept a new destination.

You make bad blood, in the old phrase, about situations life presents. An emotion slows you. Joy and the happiness of living are limited. Frustration in a sexual life can be part of the climate. The tendency is to blame other people, to scorn them, to make them responsible for what is missing and for the joy that no longer carries you forward. You feel unsteady on your legs. Doubts weigh. You feel powerless. Do you deserve to be happy? French cailler means both to clot and to be frozen stiff. Nothing moves. The spiritual interpretation also asks whether staying put is what some part of you wants.

Sorrow, discontent, and frustration can be let move, and responsibility for your own life can be taken up. The right to happiness is something the pages say has to be admitted. The anticoagulant is what keeps the clot from travelling while you ask where the next step is.

A gentler way to hold it

• Name the event that stopped you. Separate it from the clot, which still needs its medicine.
• Notice whether you are hesitating inwardly, outwardly, or both.
• Walk when your clinician says walking is safe. Do not rub the leg to make the joy move.