On Monday the 13th June I got up as usual at the back of six got washed and dressed and dragged the Mutt out of his bed for his morning walk, nothing out of the ordinary but as we came to a small hill at the far end of the street where I live I became suddenly very breathless.
This got progressively worse over the coming week and got to the point where even walking along the corridor at work which is flat I had to stop because I couldn’t breath very well, over the week trying to get an appointment to see a GP was fruitless they were booked up to over 3 to 4 weeks away.
By the Fri morning I was in a bad way my calf in my left leg had swollen over night to nearly double the size of the right leg and I could hardly get any breath and I had a stand up fight with the receptionist over the phone telling her if she did not give me an appointment to see any doctor that day I would come down to the surgery and stand there at her desk until some one saw me. She relented and suddenly found an emergency appointment out of fresh air, so off I toddled to the Doctors.
The Doctor examined me and then told me I had to go to the Hospital there and then she suspected a DVT in my leg and was sure this had travelled to my lungs, so off I drove to the hospital with a letter from my GP and was seen by a very efficient Asian Junior Doctor who gave me a serious once over ordering an ultrasound scan on my leg and a CT scan on my Lungs.
An hour passed by in a blur as I was poked prodded and examined more than I have ever been in my life and the doctor came back with a very serious look on her face saying I had a massive blood clot or pulmonary embolism in the arteries in both lungs and I had to get anti coagulant drugs in me ASAP so I was hooked up to a drip, and I also had to get injections ever three hours, I was then transferred to an acute observation ward, the seriousness of the situation was brought to me when the duty doctor was sitting at the end of my bed at one o clock ish Fri night/Saturday morning after another injection he told me that if they hadn’t got there hands on me when they did it was highly unlikely I wouldn’t have lasted the weekend, that statement certainly concentrated the mind.
So after 5 days in hospital they let me out clutching warfarin tablets and self injection drugs to continue with the treatment for the next week, although the injections have now ceased it looks like I’ll be on warfarin along with the other pills I have to take for the rest of my natural this also includes weekly blood tests to make sure no clots are forming anywhere.
I’m very grateful to everyone who looked after me in the hospital and even my doctors surgery but I have complained about the length of time to get an appointment with a GP I said in my letter that I think it would be easier to get an audience with the Pope than get an appointment within a day or two, I was told I should have just gone to A/E at the hospital but I didn’t realise just how serious it was and being old school A/E is for emergencies like car crash victims and shit like that, our NHS is hammered just now and A/E it’s full of people who clog things up because they cant get doctors appointments which can’t be right what a waste of resources.
I may be fit to go back to work in two weeks but I’m not rushing back they can wait, anyway that’s all the excitement I’ve had in the last few weeks don’t need any more at the moment…
