TO label Chloe McConville’s past year as a rollercoaster would be beyond an understatement.
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At this time last year the professional cyclist’s European season was halted in its tracks when blood clots threatened her lungs and longevity.
It was months of blood thinners and no exercise that had the potential to have her bleed in anyway.
But in October she was added to the Australian Orica-AIS squad to again race in Europe — it was a dream come true that quickly became yet another health nightmare.
Myrtleford born-and-raised McConville started suffering similar symptoms to those that signalled the pulmonary embolisms, but this time the diagnosis was even more dire — at one stage medicos believed she had suffered a heart attack, then they feared her liver was shutting down.
But last Friday McConville boarded a plane bound for the northern hemisphere — it was the same day she had returned from Europe “my lungs full of blood clots and Warfarined up to the eyeballs” a year earlier.
This Saturday the former gun cross-country skier-cum-bike rider will get to live the dream — ride in the professional peloton in the Netherlands.
Today, with her permission, we have re-printed her emotional blog on a remarkable 12 months of grit, determination and fear.
TWENTY-four hours ago I boarded a plane bound for Europe to race with Orica-AIS. It has been a day that I wasn’t sure would come.
Ironically the day that I few out of Australia this year was the day I boarded the plane last year to come home, my lungs full of blood clots and Warfarined up to the eyeballs so the clots couldn’t get any bigger.
On that flight home last year I was done with cycling.
I had worked so unbelievably hard to get into the best form of my life, I was so determined to see if I could qualify for the Commonwealth Games, and then in the space of one 10-hour car trip, that was all gone when blood clots formed in my legs and then travelled up to my lungs.
It took some convincing when I got home, mostly from my coach Donna and my partner Julian, that I could get back.
The rehab from the pulmonary embolisms was frustrating and seemed to take forever. No riding on the road, no mountain biking, no skiing, no snowboarding, no high risk activities ... no fun.
It was an incredibly crap nearly four months of ergo riding, gym and running. But I got through and then got offered my dream of riding with Orica-AIS for 2015.
Things were looking great in October, I had a solid showing at my first tour back in the Tour of the Goldfields NRS and my training was coming along nicely.
The stuff I worked on while off the road was starting to show. And then, just over a month later at my first training camp with the team, my world started falling apart again.
I started to get some really weird symptoms that were kind of like the pulmonary embolism, but then felt more like something was wrong with my heart.
For me it felt as though I wasn’t sick, but something underlying was not right.
I got sent home from camp as a precaution to get checked out.
Three days later I was admitted to Geelong Hospital with a suspected ‘heart incident’.
My cardiac troponin levels were nearly 10 times the normal level, indicating basically I had had a heart attack.
Five days in hospital, a false diagnosis of another PE, every test they could do on my heart, and I was discharged with no answers.
Time off the bike, more hypothesised diagnoses, more tests, more negative results and by mid-January I had missed all the Aussie summer of racing and still wasn’t feeling great.
I had varying levels of fatigue, ridiculous brain fog (when at its worst I could hardly articulate a sentence and would forget what I was doing all the time), aching legs, shortness of breath and heart palpitations.
The most frustrating part was so many health professionals kept telling me I had anxiety and this was causing the symptoms.
I sought the advice of a naturopath, Rob Claridge, a functional diagnostic nutritionist, Ann Srbinovski, and an acupuncturist, Nick Livingston.
All independently were convinced my liver was not metabolising anything very well, so I started changing my diet to gluten free, dairy free and refined sugar free and I started feeling a fair bit better in a week.
But then the symptoms slowly came back again. I had more blood tests and finally a red herring. Ridiculously low testosterone levels, which explained the underlying fatigue and my lack of recovery. But how and why could they be so low?
My boss (Dr Victor Telegin) spoke with a very highly regarded obstetrician, Dr Michael Shembry, who questioned what contraceptive device I was on. Due to the blood clot episode I had come off the pill and had been put on Implanon in June, a progesterone only implant.
The Implanon had suppressed my ovaries, causing low testosterone production, and the fake hormones had absolutely cooked my insides.
My liver function tests showed results of someone coming close to fatty liver disease.
It is very likely that the 10 years I had spent on the pill had impaired my liver function, which is what had caused the DVT in the first place.
So after months and months of feeling like rubbish, removal of the Implanon significantly improved my symptoms within a week.
By the next weekend I was racing club criteriums in St Kilda.
And now finally I get my chance to race in the professional peloton again next weekend at the Marianne Vos Classic.
I still have to be very careful with how I treat my liver until it has fully recovered, but fingers crossed the health issues are now well and truly behind me.
I’m looking forward to helping my teammates to some great results over the next five months of racing.
For this season I am based in the northern part of Italy in a town called Gavirate.
My racing calendar sends me all over Europe, so I will try to keep the blog updated so you can follow the crazy lifestyle of professional women’s cycling.