In my previous post I largely skipped over the fact that I’ve been getting more/different pain over the last few weeks, as the post was largely about the disability driving assessment. Well, it turns out the GP wasn’t quite so keen to skip over my new symptoms.
The good side of the NHS
For about 4-6 weeks now I’ve been getting increased pain across the thoracic area again. Nothing like how it used to be, but definitely worse than it has been for quite some time. I’ve also been getting what I can only describe as a mix of feeling like my hamstrings, and to a lesser extent my calf muscles have gone twang, feeling like the backs of my legs are badly bruised, and feeling like random parts of my legs are dead. This is exacerbated when I sit down, when I also get pain and numbness in my backside after only a short time – sometimes less than 10 minutes. Having got past the excitement/stress/general busyness of daughter 2’s wedding last weekend, I figured it was time to get it investigated, and perhaps waiting until I see Mr Mundil on 13th October might not be sensible, particularly if it turns out not to be related to my condition.
I’ll come on to how I ended up with a GP appointment a bit later, but the main thing is, I saw a GP yesterday afternoon. I hadn’t seen this GP before, but she had obviously read my notes pretty well and asked me lots of pertinent questions. Far from suggesting I wait and see Mr Mundil on 13th, she sent me to A&E, if only to rule out the possibility of me having developed cauda equina syndrome. And so, rather than heading off to see Michael Ball perform at the Portsmouth Guildhall last night, Ruth and I spent the evening and into the early hours of this morning in a rather busy ED at UHS. On arriving and finding a rather full waiting room, I was extremely please to be taken through to the waiting area for PITSTOP. I’m not quite sure how long we waited there – probably longer than it seemed, but not an inordinately long time, and was then taken into a bay to be asked to confirm what had been going on, what I could and couldn’t feel, and to have a bladder scan. I was then moved into the waiting area for majors. The staff were great, and I’m pleased to say the patients were all being pretty patient, despite how busy it was and the inevitable wait we were all facing. One of my highlights was the mother of a patient behind me in the corridor who I suspect could only see the RES letters on the sign to a side area and asking if that was a staff rest area as she kept seeing a lot of doctors and nursese hurrying in and out. One kind paramedic doing a handover pointed out that the sign actually said RESUS, and that she really didn’t want to see her daughter going in there. 🙈
Anyway back to the point. A few hours and a catheter failure 🤦♂️ later and I was seen by one of the resident doctors. She was very kind, very patient, and from the look on her face quite obviously very confused by what I told her, and what I could and couldn’t feel when she tested my nerves. I told her it was ok, because I know I’m a bit of a weird case, and she seemed to be relieved to have that out in the open. 😊 She said that, since I’d not had an MRI since 2022 it was quite likely they would want to do one, but she wanted to talk to her consultant and to try to get hold of the on-call spinal team. When she came back she said they had agreed that an MRI was probably required but that they couldn’t do one because of my implant. I explained that I can put it in MRI safe mode, so she went to check again. The response was that neither the ED consultant nor the spinal team were happy to do an MRI, let alone take any interventional action that might be needed from that without first consulting with the neuromodulation team on Monday morning, and so I was discharged on the understanding that if I had any further pain increases or loss of sensation I was to go straight back. In the meantime they would order an urgent MRI for the early part of the week and contact the neuromodulation team.
And so there you have it. Yes there was a bit of a wait, but once again excellent service from the NHS.
But it’s not all that good…
… And this stems back to me getting the GP appointment in the first place.
I submitted an eConsult on Monday morning 28th, and got a confirmation email at 08:38 saying, as always, that my request would be triaged and I would hear back from the practice by 18:30 on Tuesday 29th. When I’d not heard anything on the Wednesday morning I followed the link in the email to send a pre-packaged secure message to the practice to say I was still waiting for a response. I did that again when I woke up on Friday morning as I’d still not heard. Ruth had a physio appointment at the health centre on Friday morning, so while we there I popped over to reception to ask what had happened to my eConsult. I was then told that it said an urgent face-to-face appointment had been requested, and I was asked if I wanted to go back at 4.30 Friday afternoon. Having then seen the GP at that time and gone to ED in the evening, I saw the clinical notes that the GP had sent me with, and in there it clearly states that my eConsult was triaged and the urgent appointment requested at lunchtime on Tuesday 29th, but nothing had been done until I showed up on the Friday morning to ask in person, despite 2 online messages in the meantime.
So frustrating because, had I been seen by the GP on Tuesday, the neuro team could’ve been involved by Wednesday at the latest, instead of waiting another 5 days. This is not the first time the practice has had a complaint raised by me for admin oversights. 😡 Who knows, we might even have got to go and see the show last night and enjoyed a night out rather than now trying to see what, if any refund I might be able to get.