Pointer 2: Kittens!

[liv]

It's the day after the election. We're probably doomed. And ghoti has provided that well-known antidote to bad news: KITTENS! So I recommend you should all go and look at teeeeeny new-born kittens until you feel enough better to figure out what to do next.

I am not refraining from posting about the election because I have awesome self-control, but rather because I have no time. And I want to come at least close to the three_weeks_for_dw challenge I've set myself. Hence, kittens.

Last night the NHS's rather robotic triage system sent me to Urgent Care. I think an appointment at quarter to midnight at Urgent Care is better for both me and the NHS than hanging around in A&E, but it's still not very good, because I patently didn't need it and they weren't able to help with what is wrong with me.

Basically, the doctor verified that I'm not in imminent danger of keeling over; I'm not having a heart attack even though a chest which is in pain ticks the chest pain boxes, I have absolutely no signs of asthma, and my circulation is delivering oxygen properly to my body. She was kind but made it clear she didn't really have time to help me deal with painful breathing that isn't in fact life-threatening. Her best attempt at a diagnosis was "maybe muscular?" but I'm fairly sure that was a wild stab in the dark. A friend said that in similar circumstances he'd been told it was probably inflamed membranes, which is my best guess too though I was trying so hard not to self-diagnose.

We had a fairly sensible discussion about the risks of aspirin, and concluded I can probably get away with it. So I went home, took aspirin, did not trigger any asthma, and slept throught the night. Today I feel much the same, as yesterday, really unpleasantly sore but not actually ill. I will try to use this as a motivation to register with the GP like I've been meaning to, cos in my heart of hearts I knew all along this is more a GP sort of thing than an emergency thing.

Many thanks to everybody who send supportive messages here, on Twitter or by text. I felt really cared for.

Comments

[angelofthenorth]

glad you're ok

[liv]

Thank you; I'm sorry for scaring people cos my update that I was ok got caught up in firehose commentary about the election.

[rysmiel]

News from Alberta may also be helpful for people tying to maintain optimism about the democratic process.

[liv]

It is always cheering when what seemed like a perpetually fixed situation actually admits change for the better. Yay Alberta!

[rmc28]

Good to hear from you :-)

[liv]

Thank you, I am touched by how much people were concerned about me when I was whingeing before.

[ewt]

I am very glad you are not keeling over anytime soon. I hope that you are able to register with a GP without too much waiting around.

I used to try not to self-diagnose. Then I came up with a plausible explanation for my joint and muscle pain, discounted it because I'd thought of it myself, forgot all about it, and had another couple of years of various medical people telling me there was nothing obviously wrong with me before someone figured out what was going on. At the time of self-diagnosis I had no idea that my plausible explanation actually had a name and was a collection of symptoms that people have studied, nor did I have the vocabulary to research it online. Perhaps if I had been able to say to someone "well, what it really feels like is that my joints move around quite a bit and I'm always sore from that or tired from the muscles working harder, is that a thing?" they would have said "oh, we should send you to a rheumatologist". Perhaps not.

[davidgillon]

I've had rheumatologists swear blind that I'm not hypermobile, so no guarantee on even the specialists getting it right. My most recent ortho referral I grabbed the bull by the horns 'I'm hypermobile, look' and demonstrated, he agreed, and we got on with things.

[liv]

Yes, I think it's wrong to regard doctors as oracles in the matter of diagnosis or anything else. I always treat any comment from a doctor with skepticism, and ideally I would like the same from them, I expect them to take what I tell them seriously but not necessarily to believe me just because I say so. It's all hypothesis forming and testing, in my view!

[shehasathree]

yeeeep.

[liv]

Thank you for the supportive message. And yes, registering should be easy, the practice is right here on campus. I'm just procrastinating about getting round to it!

I would totally self-diagnose if I had unexplained chronic symptoms and wasn't getting any helpful suggestions from medical folk. But when I make a first appointment, I try not to bias the consultation. The thing is, I'm very confident in manner and I have a fair amount of medical knowledge; I may even be a better diagnostician than the bottom part of the curve of GPs, especially with the advantage of knowing my own body and having more time to think about it. That's a problem, though, because even if I do happen to be smarter than the GP I'm talking to, if I interfere with the process they're trying to follow by suggesting possibilities, the outcome is likely to be worse than if I let them apply their skills as they would with a completely lay patient, which is what they're trained to do.

[davidgillon]

My GP on the subject of chest pains 'oh, it's just stress, everyone gets that.' In that case it was, but I'd really have preferred she said that after examining me, rather than instead of!

[liv]

Yeah, I think it is mostly just stress in my case, and I've done some very mild damage which then ended up being painful when I was generally in a pro-inflammatory state due to having a cold. I was really satisfied with the old NHS Direct system, they seemed to be pretty good at deciding whether I needed in person attention or not. But the replacement, the symptom checker and 111, are too script-based and the phone operators don't know what they're doing, so everybody ends up getting examined when it's not really necessary, which defeats the point.

[lilacsigil]

You're feeling better! One good thing happened in the UK! That's rather cheering.

[liv]

Aww, thank you, I'm glad that counts as a good thing, that's really sweet. I mean, the Scottish results are looking pretty good, if what you're after is breaking the pro-establishment and pro-austerity agenda. I really did pick a bad time to have slightly alarming symptoms but actually be fine, though.

[ursula]

Yay not asthma! (I had very similar conversations about chest pain when I was first being diagnosed with asthma.)

[liv]

Oh, sorry, I expressed that unclearly. I have asthma, I have had it since I was three, but the symptoms I have right now are not caused by asthma, because I have no detectable (either via my own subjective experience, or by the doctor listening through her stethoscope) symptoms of airway tightening.

[shehasathree]

Possibly costochondritis? Good luck getting set up with a GP and getting it taken care of.

[liv]

Thanks for the suggestion. I'm pretty sure something is / was inflamed somewhere in my chest wall, I don't know enough to tell if it's cartilage or bone or membranes or what. But yes, I should get registered and seen to properly, thanks for the encouragement.

[lethargic_man]

Glad to hear there's nothing seriously wrong with you.

[liv]

Yes, I'm very glad of this too! And it seems to have got better by itself, so I'm not too worried. Thank you.