Deep Blue Ocean

I've been hesitant to update on my health issues because -- well health issues -- and anger.

I'm just a bit angry and when I think about it I get angrier.

The investigation under general anaesthetic was a lot less fuss than my fear level prior to it -- my last general anaesthetic was thirty years ago and I was concerned that bad things might happen. As it was bad thing did not happen, unless you count not having the amazingy cool dreams I had last time and/or a skin reaction to the wipe they used before the catheter in my hand. That and lying there being told I should feel woozy from the gas and... not feeling woozy. I just blacked straight out at the injection, no woozy...

Not a lot of woozy afterwards either. They kept me in the bare minimum hour after I woke (I think they were pressed for bed space because three of the other six people in the side ward with me were still there and they'd come back before I left for my turn. The lining of my uterus is healthy -- all is well except for the fibroids... the big guy and some others.

Not so well is that in the pre-op check they asked if I was still being treated for the anaemia they'd written to my GP about two years ago. Ummm... saly no one had told me, and like the fibroids my GPs had missed finding it themselves -- let's face it the massive fibroid was 'menopause' and the tiredness and fatigue was 'obesity/my age/the lupus'.

My Hb level is 8.1 -- this being a score out of 12 not 10.

Sadly, after the all being well I went home and tuesday night had a low grade fever. I called Day Surgery and they told me to go to A&E. I figured I'd caught the streaming cold from the nurse who was running off-ward to sneeze... but I went. I stayed there four hours (one hour of which was spent in the out of hours drs surgery before the nurse there bounced me back to A&E) At just past midnight I told a nurse I was going to leave... She tried to persuade me not to. I asked her how long it would be for me to see a doctor (other than the three junior doctors in the staff area behind her doing nothing much at all along with four nursing staff in an almost empty department) -- I nearly laughed when she told me it'd be two more hours (and that probably wouldn't be two hours and I'd be able to go or get treated or whatever). So I went home.

Thursday morning I rang my GP and she gave me a token prescription for antibiotics (by now they should know that it takes more than a five day minimum doese to shift anything out of my damaged lung but...) and a whole load of iron tablets -- to take until I was feeling well enough to come in to the surgery. She also denied any knowledge of a previous letter. Reading the leaflet with the tablets it's fun to not that you're note really supposed to take them with antibioticsand that the dose she's prescribed is the preventative one not the treatment one...

The next day I got a short and very jumbled letter from a more senior GP at the practice which didn't actually mention anaemia but that I should come in to discuss 'it' (no really, nowhere in the letter does it say what the it is). Blamed 'it' on the fibroids. Umm no, if you'd checked your notes you'd know I'd come in last year to report my periods going on longer but being *lighter* than usual. But then if when I'd been trying to talk about the weird flaky toe nail experience these guys hadn't reminded me that it's 'one appointment, one patient, one problem, only' they might have had another symptom to work with.

[see I'm kind of resentful and annoyed and even if this had been taken care of last year instead of this it'd be less major, less pain, less discomfort, and less in the middle of me nursing my mother back from a PE and heart failure]

The letter enclosed a form for getting another blood sample taken (because yes, it's going to be different this time) sadly it doesn't say *where* I should be taking this form -- hospital, practice nurse? Or when. It does however ask me to report any other gastro-intestinal symptoms -- wait does that mean *besides* the acid reflux that's probably being caused by the massive lump in my abdomen? And otes that I may need to be prescribed iron supplements... so like the iron supplements your fellow GP already prescribed...

So anyhow, I've been 'pregnant' longer than an elephant and anaemic as long or longer.

A simple blood test would have caught one, a simple external examination would probably have caught the other (given my GPs actually know what an abdomen is supposed to feel like/contain).

And I am coughing up pale green phlegm still and my heart keeps kicking up to 100-120 bpm when I move around. But tomorrow I have mother's hairdresser coming round, the day after it's the phlebotomist and physiotherapists. And the GP wants her to see a dermatologist before they'll give her anything more than antihistamine for the weird rashy lessions on her skin.

Yup, I will get around to popping in for a chat -- possibly at some point when a I have my voice back and am not squeaking ike a hysterical cartoon mouse to get a word out, and b) not quite as close to losing my temper as I am now. Because no, it's not about me or me not reporting this stuff...

It's about how they see me. And treat me. And I'm sick of it -- literally.