Categories: uncategorized
Date: 24 August 2007 21:35:55
Well I can't let my recent medical experiences go by without a bit more description and information - there were some good bits with fantastic medical staff, and some ..er.. well not so good bits with ...er...not so good medical staff - all in all an interesting experience!
The thing is - I'm not sure how much my concentration and literary prowess is up to scratch so you may have to make do with a lot of brief entries.
Anyway - to start - I woke a week last Tuesday with what I thought was bad indigestion, but a few hours and a lot of vomiting later I decided that something really wasn't right and phoned NHS direct. They advised me to get an emergency appointment to see my GP which I did. The GP I saw in my group practice was great - thought it might be something as simple as food poisoning but gave me some stronger pain killers (tramadol for those of you in the know) and tooks some blood tests and told me to phone back at 5.00pm when he would have the blood test results. This I did to find the blood tests had come back clear, but when the GP heard that I was still in considerable pain and that tramodol hadn't really helped he advised me to go to A and E.
I went to A and E and was seen quite quickly and they took loads more blood tests and gave me paracetamol and codeine which still didn't help the pain much. My lovely friend M came with me which made the whole thing a lot easier and less scary. The thing is, all the blood tests came back negative and the doctor in A and E really didn't really seem to believe there was much wrong with me ( because he couldn't find anything!) and wanted to send me home with paracetamol and codeine. He explained that he didn't think my pain could be that bad because my pulse and respiratory rate hadn't increased enough! Well at this point , my fellow wibloggers, you would have been proud of me! Still in pain (not the worst pain I've ever been in, granted, (that title is reserved for some migraines I've had and now more recently, the removal of a drain - about which more later!) but still pretty bad) and vomiting bile in a lovely shade of green, I was politely but firmly assertive and stated that I wasn't willing to leave until the pain was under better control! He was visibly annoyed and said to me rather patronisingly "You want to be admitted don't you" to which I replied " No I want the pain to be under control." He reluctantly referred me to a surgical team who admitted me (at about 2.00am; my lovely friend having stayed with me all that while) and gave me a morphine injection which blessedly did actually reduce the pain to a dull lumpy ache!
I still feel annoyed with this doctor, though my friend who is quite high up in the medical profession (associate medical director for those to whom it means anything) just said "He'll learn!" I'd just have preferred it if he hadn't learned on me! Now I know why it is known as "practising" medicine!! I later found out that if the neck of a gall bladder is not completely blocked by a gall stone, but still letting some bile through, the condition may not show up in blood tests. For anyone thinking of being a doctor in A and E - read and learn!