Skip to main content

Pain again!

Another short post I'm afraid. The pain in my calves has continued to get worse, getting to a peak last night, when I only had 2 hours sleep and was crying (wimp!) with pain twice in the night. At last however, the medical professionals are getting concerned and I have some action. I had a blood test yesterday and have a consultant appointment on Monday. I went to see the doctor today and he thinks the problem is related to my diabetes but was honest in not knowing what to do next. He did however prescribe me a much stronger pain-killer (tramadol) and a drug that deals with nerve pain. He thinks that it may be neuropathy, which is rare in a recently diagnosed diabetic, but seems the most likely outcome with my symptoms. This afternoon I had the best sleep in ages and hopefully that was because of the pain-killer. I couldn't go to work today, which was fustrating as I hate having time off sick (in fact this is the second day in 10 years). I just wasn't fit enough to do anything. I still took calls and had to deal with a particularly difficult customer!

Fingers crossed that the blood tests show something conclusive on Monday, but I am not pinning too much hope. The doctor said that if nothing came from Monday he would refer me for some scans, but wasn't sure who he should refer me to as he wasn't sure what the problem was. He suggested that I may have to have a raft of tests. I don't mind as long as the pain is controlled.

Other than that life is OK. Have Claire's parents here for the weekend helping to build a compost heap in the garden. There is so much grass from our lawn that it fills 5 bags of garden waste, it would be good to put it to use.

Hopefully a better week next week!

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The CCG Project!

In order to find out the situation around the country for Libre prescribing now that the national policy has been published, I have made the decision to contact many of them to find out their plans.  I have arbitrarily chosen to contact all English CCGs that in December 2018 prescribed Libre via Primary Care to less than 5% of their population (and one specific request from a group member).  I had hoped this would be a small list, but there are 135 CCGs on the list.  I may have bitten off more than I can chew, but I'm committed to doing this and feeding back.  It worked before and hopefully this level of scrutiny will bring similar results. Below is a screenshot of the base document I am sending to each of the CCGs - it has some fields that are merge fields, so don't worry about the brackets and codes in the document (I found a typo, which has now been corrected too) .  The major piece of work with respect to this is finding the right person to contact....

August Libre Update - Data, data and more data!

This month's update will be dealt with in two parts, both focusing on data; the first part summarising some data about the prescribing policies across England, the second my usual update on prescriptions fulfilled across the UK. Libre Prescribing Policies and Implementation in England There didn't seem to be an easy way to compile this.  I used the Diabetes UK Map  to link to the policies and then I cross-checked this with a Google search to see whether there was any more information.  I had to do this line by line for each of the 195 CCGs in England - quite a lengthy and tedious process.  However, I am pleased with the information arising from the data. Firstly, the headline figures - how many CCGs were funding Libre, how many had denied funding and who were still undecided?  There are differences of opinion about these figures as some CCGs have not been clear (Staffordshire CCGs), and some have agreed to fund, but are yet to actually fund due to implement...

Finally an Update!

So, I have finally got the motivation to update my blog. There's probably nobody reading it anymore, but just in case...here goes. What has been happening? Well, I am still honeymooning in terms of my diabetes, so need less insulin than previously. It is proving a bit difficult to judge and I had a bad hypo last week. Basically, I was almost unconscious and Claire had gone out for the evening! Luckily I found some wine gums and came out of it eventually. Last weekend was Josh's thanksgiving. Our church doesn't really approve of christenings of babies whose parents are not both confirmed. As neither of us are, then a thanksgiving was the choice. It turned out to be a lovely service and the small group of people that we had meant that it was a great day. The sun even shone for most of it. This weekend is the Open Day at work. I have helped organise it, including getting a person to create a special newspaper for the day and be there to add pictures and make a live n...