Moving out of home
Thu 21 Jun 2012
Hi all, I’m Erin, a guy with mild/moderate haemophilia A. Like a lot of people around my age, I finished school, started working, made a lot of new friends and really started thinking about moving out of home.
I worked out all the things I would need to move out – a lot of my clothes, furniture for my room, and as nobody else had really thought of it, a kettle and a big pot for pasta.
Then I realised that I would need to organise how I would get my factor. When I moved out I didn’t actually move very far, about 20 minutes away. So getting my factor didn’t really change much, it was just a longer drive to the local hospital. The bigger challenge was telling the people I was staying with that while it might look a bit weird I was going to have to keep my factor in the fridge.
With something like haemophilia I have found that it’s best to keep those surrounding you as well informed as possible, so I sat them all down and explained that there would be some times when I would sit at the kitchen table with a bunch of needles, and the little boxes in the fridge would diminish. They asked the usual questions, “Will you bleed to death?”, and “Is there anything we can do to help?” The first question I laughed at and explained ‘no, I’m just about as likely to bleed to death as you are.’ For the second question I told them that I really appreciated the thought, but all they would really need to do to help would be to be a little patient if I needed to use the kitchen table for 20 minutes.
Other than explaining it to my mates, living out of home has been a lot of fun, and my treatment regime has changed only in that I now travel further for my factor but that’s about it.