Welcome to my health blog. I am a 29 year old living with a range of strange and confusing medical symptoms and conditions including various functional/neurological disorders, Endometriosis, PCOS, Raynaud's Disease
and seronegative Hughes Syndrome. This blog is to document my struggle with doctors and the impact these illnesses have on my life. I hope that in some small way, my experiences will give others who are in similar situations some sort of strength or some form of comfort. Thanks for visiting!

Some may question my choice of title but if you are ill constantly and seem to always have your brain on pain and discomfort that's making your life very difficult, you begin to feel that perhaps you are a hypochondriac or what's worse, that other people see you as one. Whether you are or not, you still feel pain, sadness, and dispair which brings me to this quote from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by J.K. Rowling:

"Of course it is happening inside your head, Harry, but why on earth should that mean that it is not real?" - Albus Dumbledore

Thursday, 14 March 2013

Hand Spasms, Voice Loss & GP Visit

I've just got back from the doctors, it might not seem like a mammoth effort but for me it seems to be. I was falling asleep in the waiting room, I don't even know why I'm so tired. When the thingy bleeped and I got up to go in it was like a truck had hit me or something (rubbish description!). I was so dizzy I thought I was going to fall over. Going to the GP with no voice is even more of a challenge. I went in and the first thing she said was 'it's not that cold out there surely?', so I nodded and sat down. I passed her the note I'd written which went along the lines of:

  • Repeat prescription with added nifedipine during the day along with the time release morning and night.
  • Not knowing what to do in terms of the FND as I'd written to the consultant saying that the insurance wouldn't cover her referrals, yet heard nothing back from her in about two weeks.
  • Increased cramping in the feet, always cold from the knee down and unable to feel temperature in lower leg. Also increased nerve problems, including the groin nerve thing then the swelling in the knees and lower leg with the blotchy pattern. 

I think it's a big ask to have a 10 min appointment and go into your GP with something like the notes above but she was brilliant. She began by going through the presctiption and sorting that out.

 As far as the FND stuff goes I believe it's seen as a 'closed avenue' for now. Seeing as the consultant neurologist spent such a long time telling me how bad and serious FND was, then didn't know who to refer me to. Then once she'd suggested people working in the same building as her were refused by Bupa to ignore the patient and not suggest NHS alternatives.. well.. it doesn't seem quite right. 

I tried to talk to my GP as best as possible (even though my head felt like it would explode with the pressure) and explain the consultation with the neurologist a little more. She seemed unconvinced that in such a short space of time the consultant could ascertain enough information to justify that diagnosis. Some things fit very well with FND but some things don't. When I showed her the photographs of my legs she asked if the consultant had seen them. I said no, and that she wasn't interested in my other conditions or vascular stuff.  My GP didn't seem to be convinced that these had anything to do with FND. 





So she's given me her email address and the next step is to look into vascular consultants at some of the bigger hospitals  in the city so hopefully they will be able to look at this and see what's happening. Who knows.. something might come of it, something might not. 

As far as my APS tests have gone, I thought they'd come back negative but turns out the results weren't in yet. Hrm...

Phoned the chemist and ordered in my meds, yey for sorting stuff.

My mind is all over the place at the moment so I just don't know what to think! Erk. I'm going to try and do one more thing productive today and then watch something nice and take my mind off things for a while.

Oh yes, so I was really upset last night. I'd attempted to go to my sisters and have a nice day, I tried to 'rest' as much as possible throughout the day but that wasn't really effective. At about 9pm I started to feel a bit tremmory and ill. The drive home wasn't too pleasant, I think it's made worse by all the whooshing headlights so in future I need to not drive in the dark. When I got home I realised the huge pressure in my head was back and I couldn't speak. I was so tired by when I lay down in bed my neck was so uncomfortable and I just felt so ill, then the migraine-headache thing set in. So, I fell asleep with my head on a hot water bottle and listened to my pain management hypnosis, which at least got me to sleep. I'm waking up about 4 times a night now with back spasms which isn't pleasant but at least its not the bowel endometriosis, ach! I'm still thankful every single day that I'm not in that much pain any more.

Anyway, here's a vid of how the voice was last night [13th March]. It was veeeery hard to talk :/ that's what I get left with after just trying to have a normal day. Not happy! [Video removed temporarily]

No comments:

Post a Comment