Medical

A scary day . . .

/ Tony / Leave a comment

It started like any other Sunday. Up at 08:00, breakfast as usual and then K**h off to work at around 09:15. She works in Customer Services at a local supermarket. I was planning my day which was a shopping visit to Aldi to save me from going after work today (Monday). I was thinking about going for a sandwich and a beer at lunchtime, but that was just a maybe.

I went to brush my teeth and suddenly felt a little dizzy. That feeling you get when you stand up too quickly or move your head suddenly. I sat down on the side of the bath, closed my eyes and tried to do some deep breathing. I have had the dizziness feeling before, but a couple of breaths and a few seconds and it usually is all okay.

Not this time. I opened my eyes and the whole room appeared to be spinning around, with me spinning in the opposite direction. I reclosed my eyes and waited for a few seconds before opening them again, but rather than the feeling wearing off, it was getting worse.

I thought I would lie down to see if that helped. That was a nightmare. I could not walk straight. I was staggering all over the place and felt that I was going to fall over. I managed to crawl to the bedroom on my hands and knees and got to lie on the bed. I closed my eyes, tried to relax and had another go at deep breathing. Nothing appeared to be working and I was beginning to get a bit worried.

After about an hour, I thought I had better go downstairs in case I needed to telephone anybody. I didn’t take my phone with me when I went to brush my teeth. I managed to get down the stairs.

I realised what I was experiencing when I Googled the symptoms. I was suffering from a Vertigo attack. Not the 1958 Alfred Hitchcock movie, but the medical condition, which can be serious. Apparently, there are times when the condition can last a few seconds but can last hours or even days.

I was able to lie down on the sofa and dozed for a couple of hours, and although the feeling did dissipate somewhat, I was still feeling quite uncoordinated when walking. So I spent most of the day sleeping on the sofa or in a chair. I couldn’t face making any lunch, and in fact, wasn’t really feeling very hungry.

By the time K**h got home, I had decided that I was not going to work the following day and it was a good job I had. The boss has had Vertigo, so was quite sympathetic (unusually.) I still have that slight light-headedness this morning. So I now have to decide, before mid-day whether I’m going to work tomorrow. My feeling is that I shouldn’t.

Waste ! ! !

/ Tony / 7 Comments

Medical Centre

Back in the middle of September, I received a text message from my GP’s surgery. It was an invite to book a Covid 19 booster jab. Because of my age, I had become eligible for the “Autumn Booster” jab. The date they had offered was not a particularly good date for us for a number of reasons. However, as I had an appointment a day or two after receiving the text, I was able to make a different appointment.

COVID-19

At the beginning of October, another text message appeared. This time, it was from the NHS, inviting me to book an appointment for the booster jab. I checked with the GP’s surgery and they told me that I was booked with them and it was on my medical record. So I left it at that making the assumption that there had been some kind of crossover delay or something.

This morning, the Royal Mail delivered a letter. It was from the NHS reminding me to book my booster jab, and explaining all the problems that ‘could’ occur should I fail to take advantage of the booster.

It seems to be such a waste of valuable Health Service resources to issue an invite and a reminder for something that is already booked. It’s not the first time this has happened. Last year I received an invite and reminder from the NHS about the annual flu jab, that I was entitled to. This was two weeks after I received the flu jab. I’m having the flu one today so will be looking out for messages and letters in the coming weeks.

Rant over !!!

It’ll all be fine . . .

/ Tony / 4 Comments

Toward the end of last month, I had to go back to the hospital to review where I was after my stay back in February. I was scheduled to go in the middle of June, but with one illness and another, it got cancelled and rescheduled. We had been watching the news programs which showed patients waiting in corridors for long periods, waiting to be admitted to a ward. This was not our experience at all. More on this in a while.

Electrocardiogram
Echocardiogram

I was to have an Electrocardiogram which shows a graph of my heartbeat followed by an Echocardiogram, to get a look at how my replacement Mitral valve was working. The Electrocardiogram showed that I still had what the medical people call Atrial Flutter/Fibrillation. This is where the heart is beating irregularly. The image shows this quite well. The large peaks show that the blood leaving the heart is going at the correct pace, whereas the small peaks show the problem with the irregular heartbeat. The Echocardiogram however showed that the valve was behaving itself.

Cardioversion

The next step is I will need to wear a portable ECG monitor for 24 hours. this will give the Cardiologist a more accurate picture of the problem. The stage after that is the more worrying one. Once the data from the portable monitor has been analysed, the Cardiologist will decide If I need to undergo Cardioversion. Cardioversion is a medical procedure that uses quick, low-energy shocks to restore a regular heart rhythm. It’s a treatment for certain types of irregular heartbeats (arrhythmias), including atrial fibrillation.

As mentioned above, there had been TV news videos showing patients on trolleys, and in corridors for hours on end. My appointment was at 14:30. I arrived at 14:25. after both procedures and a good talk with the Cardiologist, I was out at 15:20. A total of 50 minutes. I was amazed as I was expecting to be there until 18:00ish.

It arrived …

/ Tony / 1 Comment

My invitation to book a Covid-19 vaccination arrived on Saturday. The way the letter was worded gave the impression that I would get a letter from the doctors surgery soon advising me on the dates they were offering. By yesterday (Thursday) nothing was forthcoming. I decided to have a look on the local Medical Centre’s website to see If I could find anymore information. There it was, on the front page of the site. I had to book my ‘Jab-spot’ online , the Government website as they were not offering the vaccine locally yet.

So, off I trot to Gov.UK website and quickly found the ‘booking’ page. It was quite easy to navigate and I soon had booked both first and second jab at a vaccination centre just under 10 miles away. Sorted! Now we have to await for my wife’s invitation which should be in the next phase.

This morning, less than 18 hours since I had booked my appointment, I received a txt message from the local Medical Centre. The txt said, in it’s simplest form:

“You have recently been invited to have your coronavirus vaccine at a mass vaccination centre. If you would rather come to the ******** site please contact our reception team who can arrange for an invitation to be sent.”

I gave them a call. Unfortunately they were unable to offer me the dates I had booked, and It would be probably be the 1st week in March. I declined. The vaccination centre is 11 miles away, as opposed to the Medical Centres 5 miles. Not really much in it and as my car is getting 2 months to the tank of petrol, a bit of a run would not do it any harm. I just thought it was typical that if I had just waited for another day, I could have gone really local.

360 degree turn around …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

I find more than a little ironic that a couple of months ago, parents were being demonised. Their kids were using their smart phones to chat with their friends instead of having face-to-face conversations. Condemned for allowing them to sit in their rooms with their tablets and laptops. Now look at were we are at. Kids cannot meet-up with their friends to do homework, play or even just talk. No, now its all changed, and now parents are being lambasted for doing the opposite of what the experts have been telling them for the past few years.

This virus seems to have turned the world on it’s head. I remember reading that we are now a nation of on-line shoppers and that this was having a devastating effect on the high-street. Now we are finding that the high-street is shut and have to turn to on-line shopping. I’m not sure how many, if any independant grocers or vegetable shops are open, but if any are, I cannot see them staying open much longer if the staff start falling ill. So supermarkets are now the good guys.

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On another point, the postman has just delivered today’s post. This consisted of a bank statement, a birthday card, and a couple of letters. But what I find unacceptable, is that also included with what might be important information was two leaflets for house renovations and a ‘news-letter’ advertising local restaurants! Surely this kind of stuff is not necessary. I also notice that television advertising are still showing people getting together in pubs and restaurants. There was even an advert for a well known burger chain that closed it’s stores the day before the advert was shown!

You know what !!!

/ Tony / 1 Comment

Well my little part-time job in the local cafe has gone. Hopefully just for the time being. It wasn’t the most intellectually challenging work I’ve ever done, ‘Pot Washer/Kitchen Porter/Kitchen Assistant’ but it was a small friendly place that got me out of the house for a couple days a week. I say ‘hopefully’ because you never know what pressures small business owners have in keeping their business open. I suppose one of the dangers is that the owners will just give up, call it a day and that is my worry now. If the shutdown goes on for too long then maybe the staff will think the same. It has crossed my mind. I was aiming to hang my apron up just before by State Pension date in April 2021, but that may have to change.

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K*** has gone off to work and she is not looking forward to it. She works part-time in a large supermarket and has seen first hand the chaos and bitterness this virus has caused. It’s the staff that are getting the blame for the shortages and it can get dangerous in some cases. I can understand a little about ‘panic buying’ and stock piling. When you see someone buying up packs and packs of toilet rolls, you begin to think, maybe I should do the same. But what I don’t get is some of the things people are stockpiling.

I needed to get a few things on Friday and went to a nearby S********s. It was only bread, eggs and a bit of veg that we wanted, but I passed an elderly couple pushing a trolley. There wasn’t much in the trolley, but they were discussing how many bottles of ketchup they needed. As I ‘ear-wigged’ it came to light that they already had two bottles, at home and were a bit disappointed that they were only allowed to buy three. They were actually thinking about coming back later in the day and getting some more. How many bottles of ketchup do anyone need? Crazy! I do think that the rationing most stores are doing, should have been started a month ago though.

Patience is a virtue…

/ Tony / 1 Comment

I had my INR blood test appointment of Friday. It is one of those finger prick tests that only takes about 45 seconds. I fact the pre-test questions take longer than the actual test, it is usually about a ten minute job. It was an early appointment, 9am. Don’t ask me why I chose that time, because as usual with me, I can’t remember. I pulled into the car park 15 minutes before my appointment as I hate being late. We have one of those self-sign-in screens which told me that I was the next in the queue.

I sat down in the waiting area and started to look at my phone, as I didn’t really want to catch anyone’s attention. However, there was a lady sat two seats away from me, that I had seen entering the centre when I parked. She was holding her yellow record book so I assumed she was waiting the same as me. She would have been (and I’m being kind here, I think) maybe three or four years older than me. I was amused to see her tapping her foot and humming along to the music being played in the background … “Paint It Black” by the Rolling Stones is not the kind of music I would expect a person of her apparent age to listen to. It wasn’t until I got home, that I fully realised that it was highly likely that she would have listened to that music.

But I digress from the main point of this tale. I glanced up at the clock and saw that it was now 9 o’clock.
“She’s late!” said the lady, “She should be here before now!“
I smiled and said something like “She has a long way to come…” or words to that effect. The clinician does have to travel over eighty miles from Newcastle to get to our Medical Centre, so delays are quite reasonable and understandable.
“I can’t stay here all day, waiting for her,” she said. “I’m going to make another appointment!” And with that she stormed off. Meanwhile a gentleman had sat beside me and witnessed this bit of a tantrum. He asked me if she was the first in the queue and I said no, I was the first. He said he was the second, so that made the lady the third. That meant, her appointment was for 9:20 at the earliest, so why she was going off in a huff, fifteen minutes before her allotted time I will never know.

Ten minutes later, the receptionist came to inform the INR people that the clinician had been held up and would not be at the Medical Centre until early afternoon, and that she would ring to make new appointments.

I went to pick up my prescriptions and it was while I was discussing this with the dispenser that the title of this post came up. I was always under the impression that it was the younger members of society that had no patience … seems I could be wrong.

All good so far …

/ Tony / 3 Comments

New phone seems to working well. It’s not taken too long to get used to, but I’ve not used all the features yet. As I thought, I needed to get a new, smaller sim card. Fortunately, we were going to Harrogate on the day New Phonemy phone was due to arrive. I thought it would be a good idea to call in the phone shop and ask for a new sim. I explained that I was picking up my new phone later and it needed a new card. The salesman tried to upgrade my plan, but when he looked at the details he agreed that I couldn’t get a better plan for the money. He then took a few security details and was able to validate and authorise the new sim ‘to save me time later ‘ he said. Now that was a mistake! When he validated my new sim, it automatically invalidated the old one. That meant that when I checked my email, I was charged for the data, as although the card was invalid, the account wasn’t. It was only a small charge, but I was a little bit miffed.

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Because both K*** and me are classed as carers, we are entitled to a free flu jab every year. I think also that since my MVR operation, I would be classed as being in a ‘vulnerable group’. It would seem that flu can have a serious effect on a person with a heart condition. R*** accepted the injection without any fuss and was even smiling  when the nurse pushed the needle into his arm. K*** thinks it was because he could see what the nurse was doing and that he remembered it from last year. Like me, he likes to watch the needle go in. I always try to watch because that way, it does not make me jump. Many years ago, when I was a blood donor, I had a bad experience with a needle. I was in the transfusion clinic which I had been doing every six months for years. I was looking around the room when the doctor inserted the main needle into my arm. I was not expecting it and it startled me a little. This reaction made the needle go into the vein too far, and instead of laying in the vein itself, it pierced the other side and from what I was told, blood was escaping into my arm. This resulted in a small haematoma forming. I was assured that it was not dangerous, as they had caught it in good time, but they said it could have been a lot worse. Ever since then, I’ve tried to watch for the moment the needle enters and I don’t have a problem.

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A little bit pear shaped …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

Last week, K*** suddenly noticed that she could see ‘floaters’ out the side of one eye. She had just started a new prescription for her contact lenses and thought at first it was that. But it got worse and she was experiencing a bad headache. Called the optician on Friday, who told her to come straight away. They sent her to the eye-clinic at the hospital, and it seems that the gel that surrounds the eye had become damaged, causing a bleeds at the back of her eye. They told that it should just clear up in the next few days, but she has to go back in a fortnight for check. Now, it would have hard anyway, but we had invited K***’s parents for lunch that day and we couldn’t really put them off. So I was ‘entertainments officer’ for the day. K*** thought she would be home by half past one, but it was nearer five when she got back.

To top it all, whilst I was out on Monday, I think the wind got into my eye, as that has been sore since then. Feels swollen and is a little uncomfortable when I blink, but not to the same extent as K*** has suffered.

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My laptop has started to play-up a little. It’s seems to have been happening since the last major update to Windows, but I think it is just a coincidence. What is happening is that my Wi-Fi connection dropping out. Does not happen to any of the other devices we have connected though which kind of proves it is not the router. My other Windows 10 machine does not have the issue (although I don’t had it powered up as much) which may be another pointer away from the issue being down to Windows update. I did Google the issue, which led to a lot of possible reasons. The main reason seemed to point to an issue with the network card in the laptop. I’m awaiting a reply from the manufacturer as to what can be done, but I’m of the opinion, that I may have to live with it. I can connect directly with an ethernet cable and it’s not too inconvenient, but I will see what happens.

The issues with K***s emails reoccurred again yesterday, just over a month since the last time. The mail app on her iPad stopped  delivering any emails. They could be viewed on the website but were not being ‘pushed’ the the mail app. I could not get them on my laptop, which was the same as the last time. Turns out, that it was an issue with Yahoo (Sky email provider) which was exactly the same as last time. No-one at Sky or Yahoo seems to care about it. Both say they are sorry and are working on a fix. Maybe it’s time for Sky to have a rethink!

(Update: emails on her tablet are now coming through. some 24 hours after the issue started. Not good)

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Well both K*** and R*** are still in bed, and I think I’ll let them sleep longer. R*** has been a star over the past two days. I don’t know, but he seems to kind of know when K*** is not well and it tempers his behaviour for want of a better word. We have has no issues with him at all, not even when my laptop dropped the Wi-Fi.

I’m just going to start on the ironing , which shouldn’t take too long. I actually love ironing and have sort of ‘adopted’ the job as my own, which suits us both. Someone once told me that we all have some minor Autistic tendencies, and I think ironing must be one of mine.

 

Didn’t last …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

So much for increasing the regularity of my posts. I think it must have been the ‘double’ post on the 8th that upset things. Joking aside, not much has really happened over that past week. Did a couple of short walks but nothing spectacular.

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I had my Warfarin review on Wednesday. Now I think this is a silly idea. Because it is a controlled drug or POM (prescription only medication) the law says I have to have a review every 12 months. After my operation, the the surgeon explained that I had been fitted with a metal valve and as such I would need to take an anti-coagulant (ie Warfarin) for life. My GP confirmed this during my first appointment with him, a week after leaving hospital. It was also explained to me when I had my first INR blood test. So why do I need to have a review? Nothing has changed. I still have the replacement valve and it’s not going to go away. I don’t really see why I need a review. I did ask the GP at the time of the review, but he was very non-committal and answer. However, he did come up with a new idea!

Every so often, I have a blood test in which a phial of blood is taken from a vein in my left arm (a venous draw) . This is then sent to the Anti-Coagulation Clinic for analysis. I get the results, typically two days later. The new idea is to do the testing at the GP surgery. Basically I will have a pin-prick test, like the blood sugar test and the results would be available within minutes. It will still take ten minutes to do the test, but it would cut down on a lot of other time.

I have to book a special session with the lead clinician on this, but it sounds like a great idea.

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So that’s about it for the past week. Lets see what the next one brings.

Funny old week …

/ Tony / 4 Comments

I’m not going to mention Britain leaving the European Union (well maybe a little) as I think it has all been said. All I will say is that I’m very disappointed with the result. I fully expected it to go the other way but as many people keep saying “Democracy has spoken” or words to that effect. So we have to live with it. Get on and make it work. It will take a long time to convince me that the country ‘did the right thing’ but there is no going back now.

Then to cap it all England was unceremoniously dumped out of the Euro 2016 football tournament last night. Beaten by a team that, on paper should have lost. But that is what we have come to expect for a team that just does not seem to have any spark at all. Of course it is all the fault of the manager. It’s not the fault of the bunch of second rate no-hopers that were out there playing the game. No it’s the managers fault. No other industry would it happen.

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Breaking news … I have just spotted a Police Community Support Officer walking down our road

Now that is something that does not happen very often!

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Now, back to the job in hand. I have a cold. A full on, streaming, head aching cold. It started yesterday afternoon really and just got gradually worse. I can’t stop sneezing! I’ve gone through about 12 handkerchiefs today alone. One of my colleagues had the same thing last week, and I was hoping that I would not get it … but of course I did. I’ve not been to work today, and I’m staying at home tomorrow. Hopefully, I will be okay for Thursday but time will tell.

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K*** is out tonight. She is going with her sister to see Cats at the Leeds Grand Theatre. It’s not the kind of thing I would want to see, so I’m home alone. Well home alone with R*** to keep me company. Should be fun. He only came back from respite yesterday and it is all change for him. Up until yesterday, his daily routines would start from what was called ‘Day Opps’. This was an area that he and the only other ‘daily’ resident used as their base for the day. R*** also has a flat where he stays when he is on respite. The change has come about due to the other resident moving on. This means that they need to area for some other activities.

R*** is now going to be based out of his flat. We were expecting to have a bit of a rough ride with the change, but he appears to have accepted the change without any issue. I say ‘appears’, we never really know what is going on in his autistic mind when these major changes happen. The next few days will be the telling time.

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I think I have given in with Blogger. You may recall that I wanted to use Blogger as another blogging platform. It was going to be used as an outlet for a project I was working and I did not want it to get mixed up with my main WordPress blog. I think I have mentioned that I use a piece of software called “Open Live Writer (OLW)” for composing my posts. This software boasts that it connect to WordPress (which it does quite effectively) and also to Google Blogger. It is Blogger that I’m having an issue with. In OLW there is a tab, that lets you preview how your post will look, before you upload it. With WordPress, this works without a problem. However with Blogger, I cannot get it to show a preview. I know others have had the same issue, but it is a community project and so the support is a bit limited. So, after much deliberation, my Blogger blog is going.

An old friend returns …

/ Tony / Leave a comment

The thing about getting a new computer is that you never remember what software you need, until you realise it’s not on your new machine. Now I thought I had been clever, and had made a list of the stuff I use all the time. Which is fine in as far is it goes. Then you start to do some work or something and you find that you haven’t got that little bit of software that you always use, but never think about. Still, I think I’m almost there now. The old machine is in the spare room (in case I need something) and I’m beginning to get the hang of Windows 10. It has it’s pro’s and con’s, but I think a lot of it is just familiarity. It too me a couple of weeks to get used to Windows 7 after XP, and I still miss some of the things that XP did, but we move on.

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Now, to the title of this post “An old friend returns …”! The old friend in question is my first blogging editor (back to Windows XP here) good old ‘Windows Live Writer’  (WLW). I always felt it was one of the best tools for the job, and was very disappointed when Microsoft decided to no longer support it. Since then I have used a variety of editors and am still inclined to use the Blog Post template in Microsoft Word and occasionally I will use the WordPress desktop application.

Yesterday, whilst reading an article about Windows 10 compatibility issues with some older software, I saw a mention of WLW and how much it was missed. There was a list of alternatives, but near the top was a link to a website called ‘Open Live Writer’ which wimageas offering Open Live Writer as a free download. My initial thoughts was that this must one of those awful clones that seemed to perpetuate throughout the internet. After a little bit of research it looks like pressure from users made Microsoft turn WLW into an open source application and the result is Open Live Writer.

I downloaded it this morning and have used it for this post. To all intents and purposes it looks and feels the same as before. Everything seems to be as I remember WLW, and it feels quite nostalgic to be using it again. I shall test it further over the next few weeks and see how it goes, but things look promising.

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On a completely different tack, my INR blood test seems to have been a bit off the wall. INR is the International Normalised Ratio and is a measure of how much longer it takes the blood to clot when oral anticoagulation is used. For example, if your INR is 2 the blood is taking twice as long as normal to clot. I have a range which my INR has to fall within, of between 2.0 and 3.5 with a target of 2.5. Since I have been taking an anti-coagulant, my INR has usually been within the range, with the occasional blip. However, since middle of December I have three times been ‘over my limit’ so to speak. I have put it down to what I have eaten and drunk (which does have an effect), but it made me wonder if stress could be a factor. Over the December/January period, it has been quite a stressful time what with Christmas (humbug) and work. I asked the doctor at my medication review, and although he had not heard of stress being a factor, he did say that stress does have an effect on our metabolism so in theory there could be a link. However, I got the impression that he thought it was probably down to food and drink.