Done!

It's taken more than two months now, but I have apparently completed every single test that my team of doctors could think of-- I've had approximately 20 vials of blood drawn, I went through a very unpleasant x-ray procedure, and we wrapped it all up with outpatient surgery on Tuesday this week-- and I'm finally DONE!!!

The final consensus seems to be that there's nothing seriously wrong with me, or at least nothing that can't be counteracted by appropriate medications, so that's a huge relief.

As it turns out, I have two different genetic issues that both relate to blood clotting. MTHFR mutations can cause clotting, and I also have another condition that prevents clots from breaking down. (My official diagnosis is that I am compound heterozygous for MTHFR and I am 4G/4G homozygous for PAI-1, which stands for Plasminogen Activator Inhibitor.) So now I'll be taking 8 pills/day, but eventually I should be able to drop down to just 4 pills/day, and that doesn't seem so bad.