De-escalation

The vein specialist ultrasounded and poked and prodded, and concluded that my house doctor's diagnosis was right, the lumpiness in my groin/upper thigh is just swollen lymph nodes. He was politely sarcastic about my leg-bandaging skills and showed me how to do it properly: using two bandages, not just one, and wrapping tightly all around from toes up to the inside of my knee.

Sis asked in a comment about the lifestyle changes and how this condition comes to be. I do indeed walk regularly and far, but that isn't actually related to how thrombi develop.

As I understand it (and those of better knowledge are encouraged to expand or correct) a thrombosis is pretty much a random event like getting a cold in winter. There are preconditions that encourage it, like being tall and thin and having low blood pressure, but these are neither necessary nor sufficient for a thrombus to develop. The trigger is sitting too still for too long, in a way that permits blood to pool uncirculated, and the time required may be as little as a half-hour; but while this is sufficient and necessary, it isn't automatic because the great majority of airline passengers don't get a thrombus.

I do tend to sit too still for too long while working, I become completely involved in what's on screen and look up in surprise to find that the room has gone dark because the sun set an hour ago. This is what I'll have to change. I have got a timer (software) which blanks off the screen for N minutes every M minutes, and find it annoying as hell because the break always seems to come just as I am getting into the swing of understanding something. I might get used to it in time, but at present I find the constant interruption unbearable: it's reducing my productivity by at least 40% because of the time it takes me to think my way back to where I was before the break.

There must be a middle way, and I shall try to find it.