The NHS is a wonderful thing and I will defend it to my last breath, but it does sometimes move in mysterious ways.
I was supposed to have a telephone appointment with one of the practice nurses at 8:50 last Friday. No idea why. She didn’t call, but re-arranged it for 10:38. And didn’t call again. I had to take the sack truck down to the surgery to collect my drugs anyhow, so whilst I was there I asked about it. They weren’t able to tell me what was going on either, but “it might be something to do with pre-diabetes”. A result of a slightly raised Haemoglobin A1C level from my last blood test, possibly.
I’ve just found that I now have a new telephone appointment booked, at the same time next Friday as I am already attending the surgery in person to see a different member of staff 😀
Then in the NHS app I discovered lots of documents that have been added over the last couple of days, including the request for a referral to Cardiology. It says that I had “malignant hypertension”, which sounds rather anthropomorphic, and that whilst treatment had reduced my blood pressure I was now suffering from a number of problems, including dizziness, tremulousness, which I assume refers to me shaking more than poorly-supported jelly on a paint-mixing station, and myalgia, which I had to look up. Apparently it’s muscle pain. And yes, I do have that too. Positively, the concern that I may also have an under-active thyroid has now been dismissed as a random testing wobble.
There’s also a response to that request, accepting the referral with a probable diagnosis of “suboptimally-controlled hypertension”. I think I could have got that myself without the need for spending five years doing a degree in medicine 😀
So, hopefully all I have to do now is for the people with the diary to offer me an appointment, which does feel like good progress.