Calcium and Vitamin D
Yesterday afternoon, I chewed a calcium tablet and took a small one for vitamin D, after a chat with my doctor about the results of the blood tests.
I hadn’t expected a quick effect, but did I get one last night, as I felt a lot better in the evening, with a lot less pain in my mouth and arm. I went to bed at half-ten and slept well until six in the morning, which is usually my time to start the day.
Typing seems a bit better this morning, so who knows if the pills have had an affect. I can’t believe one of each can bring an improvement. It could be just psychological, in that I now know there’s nothing wrong!
Here’s hoping that they did.
Today, I’m off to London to see Ipswich play at Millwall. I shall be exploring hidden parts of London for this blog. So let’s see how my body holds up today!
If nothing though, I would argue that everybody needs a full set of blood tests at about forty to see if they have any underlying problems. If I had it earlier, they might have picked up my coeliac disease, but reading about calcium deficiency and its symptoms, I may have suffered from that too at times. I have always tended to have pins and needles in my left hand and even saw the doctor about it once. We put it down to the break in the arm caused by the bully at school. But could it have been a calcium deficiency?
Also, as I feel used to feel that all gluten-free bread was made from cardboard, I didn’t eat it. so was I getting my recommended dose of cslcium, as by law bread in the UK has to have added calcium?
I knew that there was something wrong, as I lay in hospital and wanted them to do a full blood test because I felt it was a coeliac problem. Should all of those recovering from a stroke, be given a full set of blood tests, to make sure they don’t have any underlying problems that are hindering their recovery?
Permanently Feeling Glutened
I still have the bad nails and itchy scalp and sometimes I think that I’m getting almost a daily dose of gluten. I should get the results of the blood tests in the next day or so, so I’ll hopefully know whether I have a biochemical issue.
Could it be the statins or the Warfarin tablets I take? I’ll give the manufacturers a call today too!
Pea Therapy
I have my son and his friend to lunch today. I’ve just been shelling peas, which is something that I haven’t done since I was a child.
It seemed to be good therapy for my bad left hand!
Jimmy “No Bellies” Gardner
Today one of the competitors in the Great North Run is Paul Gascoigne’s old drinking mate Jimmy “Five Bellies” Gardner.
Except that he’s slimmed from twenty-one stone to thirteen and now goes by the nickname of “No Bellies” according to The Sun.
Let’s hope he keeps to his new lifestyle!
My Father Would Turn in His Grave, if He Had One!
I had a good day yesterday, in that I made a video of the Tour of Britain at Clare and successfuly posted it on this blog. But my arm is starting to work a bit better and I’m in less pain. Perhaps, my brain is winning in its battle with my nerves and is understanding them better! If it can’t understand them, the brain says pain!
My computer told me today, that I must get ready for my Warfarin test on Monday. I do it a couple of days early, so that I can find the form that I must take.
The Dreaded Hospital Form/Letter
These letters are a disgrace and the man, who designed them should be dismissed from all his jobs immediately. I would suggest capital punishment, but even for design crimes as heinous as this, I will not ease my stance on the evil death penalty.
So why do I hate these letters so much?
For a start, they are so difficult to open, even for someone like me with only a good right hand! And one that can efficiently wield a pair of scissors. Suppose you were more decrepit than me, with perhaps severe arthritis or a missing hand. You wouldn’t stand a chance of opening the letter without damaging it, so much that it became unreadable.
Then when you have opened it, it refuses to lay flat, so it is not an easy thing to store and retrieve. I usually pin it to a notice board, but as it doesn’t do flat very well, it sometimes manages to force itself to the floor.
Perhaps, the main reason, I hate these letters so much, is that they are in many ways unnecessary. If you need to change your dose, the hospital phones you! If you forget the form, when you have a blood test, then the nurse knows the questions to ask!
But as I said in a previous post, why can’t you be informed by SMS message or e-mail?
So why would my father be spinning? He was a printer, who made a lot of money by designing paper systems that worked. He would have known how to do this form/letter better.
If I had my way, if a letter needs to be sent, then I would send a postcard. I know to some this wouldn’t be confidential, but it certainly doesn’t matter to me, that the world knows my Warfarin dose is 5 mg. a day!
A Post From an Anti-Spam List
I belong to an anti-spam list called Spammers Don’t Like Us.
This was posted today.
Several years back, my now ex and I tried SPAM(R) sandwiches for dinner one night. It didn’t agree with me for some reason. Woke up mumbling a whole bunch of stuff about pills, weight loss, credit cards, discounts, coupon codes, marketing opportunities, etc. Then I just spewed vomit everywhere.
My then wife said “Five five what?? Message? What Message?” I said back to her “Honey, I bounced the spam.” The whole thing was very freudian.
Also was my one and only experience as a backscatterer.
As a coeliac, I should ask if Spam is gluten-free.
Poor Quality Arthritis
I mentioned in an earlier post, that a couple of weeks ago, I was suffering arthritis in my right knee. This was probably the reason, why after the stroke, my left leg was stronger than my right.
But after some physio ten days ago, it seems to have gone or at least died down. I also went t0 the physio yesterday and she said it was a lot better.
I’m saying thanks for small mercies.
Should We Licence Cannabis?
I have never taken recreational drugs and probably never will. I also feel that our current strategy against drugs is a total failure and probably just makes things worse.
So it was very refreshing to read the views of Professor Roger Pertwee on the BBC. His views about licensing sales, should be taken seriously. After all, getting criminals out of the loop, ensuring quality and protecting health are probably more important.
But his views will be totally ignored. All we will do is go on building more prisons, so we can lock everybody up!
Dr. Rosemary Leonard is Horrified
The very sensible BBC Breakfast doctor is horrified. And rightly so!
So what is she horrified about. A BBC Scotland report has shown that people are turning to homeopathy instead of conventional vaccinations, such as MMR.
These cranks should be stopped as the only way homeopathy can work is by a placebo affect. It has no scientific basis whatsoever.
As someone who has suffered the death of his wife and child in recent years, I would not recommend suffering bereavement to anybody. But some of these stupid parents will find out the pain if they persist in using homeopathy, on their children. You could argue it’s child abuse!
Is There A Need for a National Anticoagulation Service?
Like many people in this country, I’m on Warfarin. This means that I have a blood test every week or so and answer a few questions about how you are getting on and if you have missed a dose. The hospital managing your anticoagulation service, then does the analysis for your INR and calculates your daily dose and date of the next test. If there is a change in the dose, you are told immediately by phone, usually within twelve hours of the blood test. On the next day, you get a letter from the hospital confirming the dose and giving the date of the next test.
I have found that one of the subsidiary effects of my stroke, is a need to solve problems and design systems that work. So after the problems with the phones last week, where if there had been a dose change, they wouldn’t have been able to phone, I got to thinking about how the service could be improved.
So what problems can I see?
- For me giving blood for a test is very easy. Although I am right-handed, because of my gammy left arm, I prefer the test to be taken out of my right arm. A week ago, they took blood in the hospital on the Friday and then I had another test on the Monday for the Warfarin. It was no problem at all. But my late wife, C, found giving blood for a test almost impossible. So we’re all different.
- The letter I get for each dose, is one of those awful NHS letters, that because of my hand, I find very difficult to open. Or I would, if I didn’t have a very good pair of scissors! There must be many on Warfarin, who have much worse hands than me!
- I live in the countryside and I have the blood test either at the GP surgery or at my local hospital. As I can’t drive, this means I have to make sure on test days, my driver comes in. It’s not a great expense and I usually do all my food shopping at the same time, but it could difficult for those who have to go to the local hospital, where transport is difficult.
- Perhaps my biggest problem, is that I travel a lot and might not be in the right place for a test. I can have them a day late, but I like to be precise in getting my dosage right! This travelling might also mean that I don’t get the letter until a few days after the test. This doesn’t matter as regards the dosage, but knowing the next test date might be important.
So what is available to improve the excellent service, I get from the NHS. And in these times of austerity, could a service be designed that was not only failsafe but cost less to run?
There are machines now to self-test for your INR, just like diabetics test for the amount of insulin they need. I used to think that this might be the way to go for me, as I’m pretty tech-savvy, but the machines aren’t cheap and it means that when I travelled, I’d need to take it with me. I’ve tried hard to avoid carrying excess baggage for years and now that I’m not as strong as I was, I don’t want to start adding to it. And my gammy left hand might drop and break it!
On the other hand, these machines only take a pin-prick of blood. So would they be much better for people like my late wife?
Technology has also moved on in the fields of communication and I now am reminded of my hospital appointments by SMS message. So there must be ways that technology can improve the service!
So what could a service look like?
I have said in the title to this post, that it might be National, but that might bring in other problems, like Data Protection. Incidentally, I don’t bother about that for my health records, as anyway most of my problems are already available to everybody in this blog.
Like now it should be based on a network of testing stations. There could be two sorts; ones that worked as now and sent the blood samples to the hospital and others that worked using pin-prick style machines, which give a direct INR reading. In the case of the simpler systems, all it would need would then be to enter them into the Service through a web page or even by phone to the hospital. Obviously, various routes could be allowed, so that patients who might be confused, weren’t upset.
The advantages of multiple testing stations are that you can go to the one that is most convenient. Suppose too, that pharmacists were licensed to do the test, so that you could do your test when you went to the shops. It would be much easier for me to go to Boots in Newmarket, than have to go all the way to the West Suffolk Hospital, because the blood nurse at the surgery was too busy or on holiday.
Multiple testing stations would also mean that, when I was travelling, all I’d need to do was find an accredited testing station.
As the testing stations would get your INR almost instantly, once it was in the Service, the results would be immediately available.
But it is in the distribution of those results that the greatest improvements can be made. We have five basic methods of communication; letter, e-mail, phone, mobile phone and SMS message. You should be able to choose how you want to be told and all of them can now be done automatically. I would take an SMS message with a letter for backup.
I elieve that properly designed such a system would work very well. The problem with it would be that some anti-coagulant departments in hospitals would no longer be needed. So what would the Unions have to say on that one!
The Anonymous Widower 