My BP continued to be high for a couple of days, so I rang the GP to discuss my general health rather than the pain specifically. She listened to what I had to say and then said she was reading my notes about neurosurgery. Her conclusion was “wow this is a complex case, way beyond my area of specialism, so see if I can get through to 7th September and speak to the surgeon.”! 😱 In the meantime she asked me to monitor my blood pressure for a few days, and said she would organise a blood test, just to check I’m not iron deficient or similar from the surgery. I rang the surgery again on Thursday as I’d not received a link. Turns out the GP had neither organised the BP recording nor the blood test. They have now booked me in for the blood test (two weeks later) and I’m now trying to convince them that the readings that my health app has automatically uploaded to the GP system – and I can see in the GP system – are ones they should use.
On Saturday we (well Ruth) had a Zambian family BBQ. It was a great day, although I felt extremely guilty for sitting there telling other people what to do to get things set up etc. Clearly the afternoon/evening if sitting and chatting, standing and chatting and going for a lie down still took its toll as I was in a lot of pain the following couple of days, and even resorted to Tramadol on the Sunday.
Things started to settle back down to being just regular painful by Tuesday and continued that way. Thursday was the day I really wasn’t looking forward to though. In preparation for the reprogramming clinic next Thursday, I’ve been asked to switch the device off for a week to assess exactly what it is and isn’t doing. I’ll keep a running log of how the pain progresses in a separate blog post, if only so I’ve got one place to look for it to report back to the neuro team on Thursday.
In what I hope will prove to be a positive move towards improving my fitness, following the chat I had with physio Kate about the cross-trainer, and her suggestion a static bike might be good, I have bought an under desk bike. It arrived yesterday so one of todays jobs is to get that set up.