Light-headed moments

I have my liver scan this morning. I am not allowed to eat for six hours prior to the appointment but considering I didn’t feel like getting up at 5am for a snack, it has been 15 hours since I last ate. I am feeling somewhat light-headed and headachey. Grrr. Oh well, at least I can have an ‘oh so exciting’ glass of water.

Still not feeling perky - in fact a right old moan bag

Redundancy is playing heavy on my mind - well more to the point, looming days of unemployment are filling me with dread. I’ve had some thoughts about things I can do but none of them seem particularly suited to paying bills which is a worry.

In addition, the vultures are back circling round my parents making odd noises about legal advice and other nonsense. Still no sign of the photos. If I was them I would not being drawing legal attention to the fact they have stolen photos from the Estate but there you go.

Have to go back to hospital tomorrow for a liver ultrasound. I am not looking forward to this.

I am also feeling fat.

Oh I do need to get a grip and stop being such a misery guts.

FOOTNOTE: would seem I’m not the only one on this fair isle feeling a bit sorry for myself - it’s part of our British make up

Knackered

Monday morning and absolutely exhausted - NOT good. Largely my sleepiness is because I spent most of last night coughing - again. I just don’t seem to be able to shake this chest thing. It hardly bothers me during the day but as soon as it gets dark the coughing monster appears. I am getting mighty tired of it as is the Beloved who even decamped to the spare room at 5 this morning it was so bad.

As an aside, amazing how light it is at 4.30am.

I am still suffering from general malaise which has not been helped by being made redundant on Thursday. I am hopeful this is a temporary blip on the employment front but I have a strange deep, dark feeling about it (most of which involves signing on and the associated destruction of the soul). At the moment my colleagues still don’t know that I am only here for another three weeks, they are being told tomorrow which I can’t say I’m looking forward to - I’m not good at receiving sympathy.

Drs’ surgeries - ARGH!

I take it all back. In February I blogged that my dr’s surgery had decided to have a vaguely sensible appointment policy. I predicted it wouldn’t last and I was right. So now I have to call 48 hours in advance for an appointment with no guarantee that I’ll get one and highly likely that it will be slap bang in the middle of the day or I have to phone and pretend it’s an emergency - and likely still get an appointment in the middle of the day. I am not sick, I just need an injection, I want to avoid taking time off work so I can get paid, pay taxes and contribute to the NHS. I will be driven mad.

Ms Personality

I love a good personality test which probably says something (negative) about my personality but I do wonder how many of them are more snapshots in time rather than an assessment of your true personality because according to some of these I found on Mental Nurse (via a link from Random Reality honestly, I wasn’t googling mental health in fear of my own!)…anyway according to the tests on Similar Minds I have no consistency in my personality at all. Which is worrying.

I will blog about how fantastic the Real Food Festival was last night but I over-indulged in the free wine and even two cans of Coke (yes I know that’s disgraceful) have not helped. Today is going to be very slow and painful.

I want to go on an aeroplane

Not a lot of note recently as I’ve been generally taking it easy following the whole hospital thing (although I did end up slightly addicted to Wii bowling on Saturday night but that’s only because I had beginner’s luck as my normal bowling technique is really crap).

I have decided though that I really need to go on holiday. I know I went travelling last year but to be honest very little of it could be described as a holiday and the six months since my return have been emotionally draining (to say the least) not to mention the physical drain of recent ill health. So I want to pack my little suitcase and head for the sun. Unfortunately my travelling companion of choice (although we haven’t actually travelled anywhere for over two years) has decided he doesn’t want to go on holiday. This is very irritating because he really doesn’t have any moral objections to the concept of holidays (we’ve been on enough in the past for me to know that he likes sunshine and seaside and stuff like that), he just “doesn’t feel like it”. Actually he’s just being awkward and you would have thought that, considering he causes quite a lot of my emotional drain problem, he would be slightly more inclined to be nice to me.

It’s all rather tension causing (which is exacerbating aforementioned need for holiday).

The NHS? A wonderful thing

I am sometimes critical about my GP but this is largely because my surgery is a bit crap. However, this week I had the ‘pleasure’ of experiencing the NHS at its very best. I say pleasure in parenthesis as noone ever really wants to be sick but there I was sat at my desk at 11.30 on Tuesday morning when I was suddenly knocked for six (and a few more) by the sharpest stabbing-est pain in my pain apparently accompanied by my lips going blue and all semblance colour of my anaemic face draining to my boots.

My (poor new) colleagues called an ambulance and it seemed to appear within two minutes (well within ORCON targets - thanks to Tom Reynolds for educating me that any such things existed) so they were either lurking around Hatton Garden (unlikely) or just being jolly amazing - which they were.

They got me onto oxygen - which felt SOO good - who would have thought breathing could be so tricky, got me into their ambulance and did a whole load of tests and then whisked me off to UCLH. I have to say I had no idea where I was nor did I particularly care (I know I was really quite poorly because my handbag was left at the office and at no point did I even think about it). We went on blue lights and sirens and I did feel somewhat guilty as I’m sure I wasn’t as poorly as most people who go in an ambulance are (yes, I know being an avid reader of Random Reality I probably had more need of a blue light than your average ingrowing toenail) but they suspected a pulmonary embolism so it seemed rather urgent - and I did still feel rather sickly child.

Have to say the next hour or so was a bit blurry with more oxygen (hurrah) and lots of needles (much less hurrah). I know I had a chest xray with a magical piece of kit which was whizzed across the ceiling so I didn’t have to move. I was weighed with a magic chair (unfortunately did nothing to magically remove the extra half a stone I have acquired), had lots of normal blood tests, an arterial blood test (not recommended) and was given heparin. Unfortunately during this time, I also felt an odd, heavy and horrid sensation in my right arm and leg so the fear went from PE to a stroke. At this point, I got VERY scared.

It seemed that again within a nanosecond I had a neurologist by my side doing all sorts of tests and although my right hand side was somewhat weaker than my left, my speech and vision were okay. The neurologist visited me twice after the initial assessment and was eventually convinced I had not suffered a stroke.

I was sent for a CT scanand then admitted to a ward. I really didn’t want to be admitted because despite the fact my blood pressure was somewhat high (for me although apparently not for the general population - it was 143 over 80 and I am a strictly 120 over 70 girl) and I was still oxygen - I really didn’t feel THAT poorly. However, given that I was on a drip and the aforementioned oxygen, I wasn’t really in a fit state to fight it too much. CT scan though - the heat stuff they inject to look at your blood vessels - flippin’ hec that stuff’s hot!

I have no idea how the time went but the next thing I was aware of was the dr (and the accompanying retinue of students you get of UCLH but more of that later) was telling me that they couldn’t find a clot but all my symptoms and blood tests indicated I did have one somewhere. I had to stay in. I also had to have another arterial blood test which involved trying again in my right wrist (cue much digging and passing out and then a more successful attempt in my left wrist).

My lovely boy (I’m  not supposed to blog about him but how else to I explain?), dashed home and got my glasses and bits and bobs. He also brought my ipod and - under his instruction - I started listening to nice relaxing music about 11pm - it sis not last long because then the attack of the vampires and night monsters began. 11.30, more blood tests; 2am, obs; 3.45am (I am not kidding), more blood tests - because they lost my first set (cue vein collapse and generally not playing the game - it took four attempts); 6am, obs.

Would you believe it they lost the second set of blood tests (yes, those painful ones they took at 3.45am)? The consultant asked his students what they thought they should do. “Take more tests?” offered one. “No.” He said slowly and with some frustration, “We find the lost blood tests, we can’t put they poor patient through more.” Now this is what I meant about the drs at UCLH. May be it’s something about it being a teaching hospital and therefore the drs are teachers as well as drs are infinitely more patient, but the drs were lovely.

Unfortunately the blood tests were not found and I had to have more. I also had a VQ scan which meant I was somewhat radioactive afterwards (I wish I could have seen if I glowed in the dark). All still pointed to the same thing: blood tests say we have a clot; scan shows there is none. What could be done? The lovely consultant conceded he was stumped and although I had metabolic acidosis, he didn’t know why. So it’s been put down to a post-viral problem and I have to go back in a few weeks for more tests. I was going to be discharged - hurrah! After more blood tests - boo!

The discharge procedure was - as in all hospitals - painful, long and ridiculous - who knew the pharamcist has to sign it off even when you aren’t being prescribed drugs? But at last I was out.

I have to say, if you are going to get sick, go to UCLH - it’s a great hospital. I felt very well cared for. Although their tendency to lose my blood test results (and mislay my notes on various occasions) was a tad frustrating - I have so many holes in me and the bruises have to be seen to be belived. However, what I find constantly amazing is that at no point did I have to think about money or cost - and believe me I was given expensive tests and drugs. We can all moan about the NHS but when you are really sick it is incredible and despite its ’sick man’ status, Aneurin Bevan’s creation should b e the envy of the world.

I am not good at being ill

Haven’t posted for ages as my common cold turned into a variety of hideous illnesses which have led to an even more addled brain than usual and a malingering cough which is causing sleep deprivation, extreme tiredness and general atrophy. Not good. In addition, my back seems to have started playing up again in the past couple of days*. I think I may just have to go around in a permanent drug-induced haze until someone decides to put me out of their misery. Anyway, as a result of my malingering maladies I have done precisely NOTHING (apart from drag my sorry self to work) and therefore had NOTHING OF INTEREST to blog about.

General update on stuff

I am still waiting for Carphone Warehouse to respond to my letter of complaint that they didn’t address the complaints of my first letter.

Had my laptop fixed although the people who fixed it are being very slack about sending the report so I can actually send my claim against PC World.

I still seem to be expanding at an alarming rate not helped by an influx of yummy tasty chocolate eggs.

*My backache may not have been helped today by the wearing of four inch heels which - when you are a size 35 - are about as high as you can get - note to self: be more sensible!