Appointments, appointments, appointments! Today it was the turn of the district nurses to come and introduce themselves and offer their support. The two nurse that came, Kim and Julie, were absolutely lovely and very helpful.
As our toilet is upstairs they offered to get mum a comode! It was a bit like when I offered to get her an electric scooter the other day. 'No way am I having a comode down here, I'll manage!!', so for now she'll struggle on up our 11 stairs to the toilet and then sit there until she gets her breath back. Hey ho! They also offered her a chair for the shower which she has accepted, progress!
She was able to tell them about the pain in her back and the pain in her hip that goes down her leg making her foot feel numb (pins and needles) and like she has cramp in her calf. They went straight to her gp and had her meds changed. So instead of co-codamol 4 times a day backed up with oramorph in between times she now has amitriptyline at night and oramorph during the day. We have also to keep a diary of pain and when she needs to take the oramorph. We had the new prescription within an hour of them leaving us, very impressive. I'm a bit concerned about the amitriptyline as it's an anti-depressant but seemingly it's also used for neuropathic pain? Anyone else been given this?
I've got to say that my experience of the health care professionals we've met over the past few weeks has been that they are caring people who would do anything to help prevent mum from suffering. So often the NHS gets bad press but I have no complaints regarding our experiences so far. That's all for now folks, today was quite a GOOD DAY!
