Post 295: What a day!
For what it’s worth, I will give the boys and girls of NHS UK a round of applause. You are genuine stars and the attitude of most of you keeps the wheels of medical interventions rolling.
At midday I had a massive heat bomb hit me. That’s now two in 12 hours, here’s what happened next…
00:00 The first heat bomb:
My Darling helped me get out of wet clothes due to sweat that ran down my arms, legs, and the back of my head around midnight. It was a huge night-sweat.
12:00 The second heat bomb:
I had another spectacular heat bomb event with sweat you can’t believe. I’ve lived with HT sweats ever since starting on the injections, but these are x5 at least. I couldn’t get out of bed and I lay in my sweaty sanctuary for half an hour.
12:30
My Darling had a perfect start to the day with another couch-to-5k on the treadmill, and after a lunch of raw fruit and Fagé.
She was happy until she got upstairs to grab the washing basket from the bathroom, with all last night’s sweaty stuff, and came in to see me.
12:45 we rang NHS111 with major sweats (x2), palpitations, and irregular heartbeats since 03:00 (iWatch data), and feeling dreadful was the forth main problem. There’s also my painful swallowing, but I’ve got penicillin for that.
Their computer said that hospital A&E was the place to go. So we grabbed all the pills and headed off.
13:35 we grabbed a parking ticket out of the machine. I said this is not likely to be a long stay because somewhere on the drive down here the palpitations stopped. At least that’s a good sign — always in the back of my mind was the holiday insurance price that might be escalating as we walked into reception. The hello’s were happy because my Darling knows all of them behind the counter, being that they’re all work colleagues, and her working shift starts within 14 hours (in this actual A&E).
13:45 Triage asked why I was here, and I replied, I feel better, the palps have stopped, but there’s something wrong.
I gave the triage nurse my phone — the iWatch data for palps and irregular heartbeats which were very common, helped with my co-morb’ — I had made my point.
“Sit down and an ECG and bloods will be taken”she said (at which point we can go home to the TV and a nice dinner).
14:30 Bloods were taken and the ECG printed. “Please sit back down and after the docs have looked at them you will be called” the nurse said (Then go home).
16:20 ish We were called into the doctor’s office where a young Dr sat. We had met him before (and liked him).
He said “everything is ok except for one thing, maybe two. The bloods showed up a big rise in your CRP (whatever that is) and that is suggestive of a problem, but it might be affected by the neck-gland swelling you have too.
Data
CRP (up 198) @ 209
Platelet (up 188) @ 519
Conclusion
We will investigate further.
That meant a chest X-ray first.
Then a long wait…
Another chat.
There is nothing there.
So the next step is to get a CT scan of your neck.
Another long wait…
A cannula was inserted into my right arm.
Another long wait…
MRI scan. This was truly horrendous. I only just got on the scanner bed, but it took a hell of a pull to get me off the bloody scanner bed. I left there in pain. (Why didn’t I ask for morphine before that scan, why didn’t I think of that sooner).
Then a really long wait.
Then we met the lovely ENT doctor who asked me loads of questions, and the A&E doctor said goodbye and left the ENT Dr in charge of us, which was mainly because he had our paperwork to fill out and it was after ten o’clock and his shift should have already ended.
Then another really long wait…
Eventually the ENT Dr was back with a plan. She would do a trans-nasal oesophagoscopy up my nose to see what she could see. I would be awake (fabulous) and there is some spray we give if there’s a need. It can take three attempts, but it’s important we check you before you go home.
A short wait…
The Dr arrived with her endoscopic lance and video screen etc., and I laid back on the bed in the consultation room and stayed still. My Darling was given the Dr’s phone to video the endoscopic lance’s screen as a record of what was found.
Everything went perfectly the first time round (or rather, up and down) and the Dr was ecstatic that we all did so well and all the data was stored.
Another long wait for the last conflab of the day (we hoped).
The last chat with the ENT Dr was that all was good with the video and nothing worrying was found.
She also grabbed a swab and some gaffer tape and whipped the cannula out of my arm so we could be free to go home. The fact that it was by then…
23:55 leave the car park to go home and feed Mr Very Vicious (who we had forgotten about), but as it happened he was happy to see us.
We all had a light supper and called that a wrap.
Anemia as a side effect of an infection.
The infection not found.
The MRI to find out what the anomaly is in my neck.
Good morning.
