What I learned this week

Firstly work gets in the way of blogging!

It has been another busy week of meeting myself coming backwards and one of those where you feel like you haven't really achieved anything - do you know what I mean?

I spent the weekend house and dog sitting for my brother and his fiance and as Mutley, their 16 week old chocolate lab was determined to get into all sorts of mischief I had to have eyes in the back of my head so I didn't get the accounts finished.  So that is this weeks job but after that they are done because the football club is closing down - it says a lot when I am not sorry to say 'YAY' to that news.



Do his eyes make him look a bit mad to you......?

It was fun to roll around the floor playing with Mutley though. He already has more strength than is to be believed - he is going to be a huge dog!

Anyway - lessons this week:

• Standing on an uneven surface at the refuse tip results in this:

Why do bad scrapes always sting more than a straight forward cut?

• Which looks like this the following day (excuse the flab):

Rocking some bingo wings there Ribena!

• So what is the lesson you say?  Don't fall in an area where your arm is going to go down this TINY gap scraping itself along these broken tiles, that shouldn't be there.

Really?  What is that stuff on the left centre of the photo just before the post?! OMG!

•  Mostly importantly; I am so lucky to have gotten away with only that injury and a stiff shoulder and
• when the injury isn't bad enough for the Accident and Emergency Department and the medical walk-in centres are rammed the best place to go to so that you can get cleaned up is your mums

So what other random lessons are there this week?

• Hubby is becoming far too used to me playing taxi to get him to and from work;
• I am too soft especially as said taxi service adds over an hour to my working day;
• SIMS 4 is addictive;
• Oh yes, SIMS 4 addiction means I haven't really grown up;
• There is approximately 99% less dog hair in the house now that the Fredster has moved out to look after his mummy, Beautiful B;
• I have more 'proper' conversations with Beautiful B now that she has moved out and misses me;
• I really enjoy not having to moan at Beautiful B for not completing her chores;
• I still haven't transformed her bedroom into my office but the sofa bed has arrived and it is scrummy;
• My hair apparently suits me more if it is curled - if only I knew how to do that myself instead of relying on a hairdresser;
• and I knew this already but being so busy means I miss catching up with my best friends!

So what did you guys learn this week?

 
Usual rules apply - see below. I would love to hear from you if you also leave comments on my blog.To join in Julie's What I Learned This Week carnival, simply follow these steps:

1. Any time this week, publish your What I Learned This Week post on your blog and comment on my blog hyper linking to your blog.

2. Then go and visit Julie’s blog at From Inmates to Playdates, find her latest “What I learned this week” and link up with the Mr. Linky form at the bottom of the post. Please put the link to your POST, not the front page of your blog.

3. Then visit the other participants and see what they learned this week.

 

No angina means anti-inflammatories.....

On Monday I had the stress test to check if I had angina - to be honest if I did have it I would have been surprised.  After all, I don't get the chest pain all the time and the last time I had it was as I arrived at the GP when all hell broke loose over the DVT in my right leg.

 

I guess it helped when I spoke to the doctor and told him I had done two 5 mile bike rides, granted on the flat (what no hills? yeah right...) without any chest pain. 

 

They took my blood pressure before I started; it was 140/90 so I guess I was a little worked up at the idea of having a stress test.  Why I have no idea - the only difference between a stress test and the gym's treadmill is that you don't need to take your top off and be wired up to a machine at the gym.

 

The treadmill started on the flat and a normal speed, easy I thought.  The first time they took my blood pressure again it had gone down - maybe I was dying already....

 

After 3 minutes the treadmill speeds up and the incline rises - okay, still not too bad considering it was the most exercise I have done in months if you discount the two bike rides.

 

The next time it rises I begin to wonder how old people manage on these inclines; you know people with actual heart conditions and angina!

 

I'm sneaking a look at the monitor and although the heart rate is climbing the little up and down lines are nice and regular. See, I'm happy as that means no angina surely?

 

It rises for the fifth time and bearing in mind I am a short arse my legs are struggling to catch up and I am using the rail to stay upright as the incline is more than I have ever had on a treadmill even when I was thin and fit! 

 

Luckily my heart rate had happily managed to get to the expected rate for my age so they stopped the machine before I fell flat on my face and the hospital gown they had put on in place of my T-shirt rides up and I get friction burns in places that I will have to explain away to my hubby when I get home.

 

Never have I been so glad to be given a cup of plain water!  I sat there grateful that for aerobic exercise my heart rate is only supposed to be 80% of where they got me today.  If I had to exercise at that pace at the gym constantly I would lose about a stone in sweat each time I went.

 

Back to the consultant for him to confirm I don't have angina.  Knowing that junior doctors rotate at the beginning of August each year and having overheard that this was the guys first day in Cardiology at this hospital I was still willing to accept his decision and wasn't surprised when he said he didn't know what had caused the pain I was experiencing.  I did, that would be the back end of pleurisy recovery!

 

I took off back to my car to ring Hubby and celebrate the decision to stop the tablet they gave me for my heart as a precaution seen as my side effect was itching.  Next call was to the GP surgery to ask them if I could go back on my anti-inflammatories. 

 

The GP response that afternoon in the affirmative had me upstairs and taking 2 of those babies immediately.  Hopefully my hands and arms will be back in the normal world of intermittent pain and ability to chop vegetables within two weeks.

 

My line manager has been in touch with my potential future line manager to let him know I have been on sick leave just in case it made him change his mind about wanting me on his team.  To be fair I would do the same thing in her position.  Having had this potential manager as my personal mentor for 5 years and therefore a more personal relationship than usual I texted him last night and asked if I could call him on Tuesday afternoon.  He asked how I was, I told him the good news on the medication front and asked if he still wanted me on his team.  His response: "For crying out loud; of course." was music to my eyes.

 

As I will be moving from a purely finance role to a procurement/finance role I am thinking that at some stage over the next month or so I should pull out all 75 novels from the cupboard and check behind them.  I could very well have thrown away all my study books for my procurement qualification during a previous spring cleaning session.  Seen as it is over 5 years since I worked in procurement I am thinking I may need to rebuy those books if I did throw them away.  Clever of me?  not!

 

This new role, if my current team can find a replacement for me, will require quite a bit of travel - 2-3 full weeks at first and then once a week thereafter.  I am beginning to wonder if it was a good idea to get Hubby his own debit card for the bank account......I suspect that money will be spent on takeaways instead of at the supermarket.

 

Anyhoo, I am off to take some more anti-inflammatories.  Have a great day everyone!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The day I didn't blow things out of proportion

You may or may not have seen yesterday's post that I wrote while sat in the Urgent Care Centre at the hospital waiting for test results.

 

To recap I went to see my GP about swollen ankles.  My ankles have always swollen even when I am skinny, my right more than my left, but lately even I have wondered whether I am right is thinking they were swelling more than normal.

 

Before my 2 weeks leave I was at the GP about the slipped disc and mentioned it and he asked whether there I'd recently broken a bone and all the usual questions, had a feel at my leg and said it was likely down to the hot weather, which is unusally hotter than normal at this time of year.

 

During my two weeks leave they swelled a little but not as much as they do when I am at work, sat in a chair, playing with MS Excel and a bunch of numbers all day.  When I returned to work they started to swell again.

 

Now we all know I have a phobia of feet, massively so, and so you can imagine the horror at the idea of taking photos of my own feet which have to bee some of ugliest in the world.  Only being able to get a morning appointment at the GP's, I figured they needed to see what they looked like by the end of the day.  In the interests of this story here they are: though I have removed as much of the foot as possible so you can just see the swelling:

 

No this is not a fat arm - this is my right ankle!



Not looking quite as swollen from above!

Seriously, this ankle would not have looked out of place on a 50 stone person.  Now, I am fat as I have gotten far too comfortable with Hubby since we married but still, even I had to agree they were a little excessive.

 

So I trollied off to the GP expecting water tablets and a stern telling off to lose weight.

 

Instead, I was sent to the hospital where I sat patiently in excess of 30 degrees of heat expecting to be told again, water tablets and start moving around woman!

 

 

After all, the initial question and answer sheet with the nurse indicated a low risk score and I am talking ZERO, so all I had to do was sit still, read a book on the iPhone and try desperately to stay awake.

 

Even when the nurse wandered back with what looked suspiciously like a prescription I was still thinking "Water tablets!"

 

Oh no, apparently the blood tests indicate a blood clot, hopefully small, somewhere so I have to return to the hospital on Thursday afternoon for a scan of my right leg.  What happened to ZERO?  Meanwhile, after getting over the shock (and having a bit of a moment because I am nothing if not melodramatic when it comes to things that shock me), the nurse informed me that prior to the scan they have to treat the results as though I have Deep Vein Thrombosis and treat me with Heparin.

 

I luckily do not have a fear of needles but I am not keen on looking at them when they poke my skin (why does it hurt a bit more when you do....) so I didn't have a song and dance when she informed me she was going to stab me there and then and I would have to stab myself daily until the full results on Thursday. 

 

I was having a moment of wondering if I could be an owl and turn my head enough to stab myself in the butt when she said the needle went in my tummy.  Instructions to pinch some skin resulted in a response from me of "Oh that's okay!  I have plenty of padding for that!" (See, I was getting over the shock now and moving into 'lets make a joke of everything' mode). 

 

For interest, in case this ever happens to you guys the needles are much smaller than those they do their vampire bit and take your blood so it doesn't hurt as much.  After full instructions, I got myself ready to go home complete with a 'sharps bin', a good idea at the best of time but when you have fluffers like mine that chew experimentally on anything they can find, a sharps bin is a great idea.  I should, as an aside, take wagers on how quickly Lily would get in it if she could reach it because she most definitely would seen as zips are no problem for her.

 

On my way out, I stopped to thank the nurses and doctors and said I hoped their arguments for, at least, portable air conditioners was successful soon and asked what I could do to help reduce leg swelling.  The usual; raise your legs above your heart position (not something I can do well at work I imagine), take small walks each hour (my boss is going to love me - another thing I can annoy her with seen as I appear to be doing that a lot lately) and drink plenty of fluids.  My question/statement "I assume by fluids you do not mean Coca Cola or Pepsi Max...." met with a resounding no.

 

Hubby went into protection mode as soon as I updated him on progress and has refused to let me do anything all weekend except stay in bed and raise my feet, sleep a lot and an occasional play on the computer - though after 2 hours the right leg swells so I take myself back upstairs. I should be grateful, apparently, that he let me put some washing on and transfer clothes to the dryer!

 

However, I have a fasting blood test early this morning and Freddy Fluff is at the vet as he is still nibbling his wrist and elbow indicating his pains are back, and Hubby has gone to work.  Which means.....I can do some cleaning without him worrying himself into a heart attack.

 

So there we go peeps, my Friday was very busy and weekend less so...how was yours?

 



I only went for swollen legs

I'm not sure if I have twittered about my swollen ankles before but having had ankles so swollen that they wouldn't look out of place on one of those people who need cutting out of their houses so they can go to the hospital I thought I had best get it checked out. Beautiful B compounded it by saying "That is just not normal". 

An innocent visit to the GP because the ankles are so swollen that I am in pain at the end of the day where I thought they would tell me I was too fat and too lose weight and all hell breaks loose! 

An ECG later because I was breathless when the GP saw me after walking up some stairs and measuring and prodding my calves didn't result in me being told I needed to lose half my body weight.

Instead I was referred immediately to hospital for blood tests to check for a clot in my legs or pelvis!  

As you can imagine when they took my blood pressure it was 156/120 and again when they thought they had calmed me down after the minor anxiety attack. 

So I sit here waiting for blood tests reassured that the nurses questions indicate a minor (at best) risk of DVT. After trying to read and nodding off (shut up! It is 30 degrees in this hospital that does not believe in air conditioning in the urgent care unit) I am almost willing to be admitted just to get on an air conditioned ward. 

My ankles are still swollen and resembling huge sausages but I am beginning to believe they are going to tell me it is because I am fat - which for once I would be relieved at even if it doesn't result in a cure for sausage ankles. 

I've been here waiting for 1 hour 15 mins since the bloods were taken and my blood pressure has reduced to only slightly elevated as opposed to being so high I may have been ready to explode. 

Having been promised an hours wait for blood results I am wondering whether I will be out in time to collect A and Beautiful B to see Monsters University at the cinema. Maybe my blood pressure will increase again the nearer I get to cinema time but find myself still in hospital..... 

Who knew that it was possible for ankles to feel tight!  Maybe this is what sausage meat feels like inside the sausage skin? 

I may just cry if they admit me!  After all, expecting a normal GP appointment I left a bag at work which had a very important valuable in it.... The third book in the vampire series I am reading. 

My OCD is not going to cope well if I have to read a different book in a hospital bed!