Saturday, January 1, 2011

The bit where my life changes forever...

It was Sunday by this stage, so my normal Doctor's surgery still wasn't open. The severe pain in my ear/jaw had actually eased dramatically and was barely noticeable anymore.
After a family pow-wow (you'll get that if you know my family :) it was decided that I should go the hospital due to my eyes. (let's call it LH)
I went first to the after hours clinic at LH, prepared to wait hours, but was lucky enough to been seen almost straight away. (luck will be a common trend as you will see as the whole story unfolds)
The Doctor looked into my eyes and his expression worried me. I gave him a run-down of the past two weeks and I asked if he would take my blood pressure.
He tried the first machine. ERROR
He tried again. ERROR
He went to the next room and retrieved another machine. ERROR
He tried again. ERROR
I could see my arm bruising before my eyes because of the pressure of the cuff.
He went for a walk to find a manual blood-pressure machine and we both sat quietly while he manually pumped the pump and listened through his stethoscope.
"Do you have anyone with you?" No.
"Do you feel okay to walk next door" Um, yes.
"You need to go to the Emergency Room right now. Your blood pressure is 210/120, it's dangerously high. The machines were sending back errors as they can't read a blood pressure that high."

I walked the short distance to the Emergency Room, sent my family a group text and walked into the completely packed waiting room. The Clinic had given me a letter to give to the Receptionist. She took me straight through to the back room and I willed my heart to stop beating so darn fast. They tried to take my blood pressure again (more errors) and I heard the head doctor say "put her on a bed now."
I was at the LH for hours. They went over my history, including what had happened in the previous two weeks. Mum arrived to sit beside my bed and calm me down. They took bloods, they took urine, the performed lots of eye tests in a dark room. My BP was slowly creeping down again. They could find nothing wrong. They sent me for a CT scan of my head, which came back clear. Mum and I could both tell that the Doctor treating me had NO clue what was wrong with me.
He suspected some sort of weird sinus condition, but wanted to perform a Lumbar Puncture to rule out anything bacterial.
I'd had enough by this stage. We knew he was clutching at straws. I had had a VERY bad experience at LH with Epidurals when I was pregnant with Kaden, so a Lum/P was the very last thing I wanted to go through. I declined treatment. He couldn't let me go without the Doctor in charge seeing me and I had to tell him myself that I was declining a Lum/P.
I disagreed with the diagnosis of Sinus and I wanted to go home and see my Optometrist first thing in the morning. They let me go.





4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

((((Rach)))) thank goodness for hot optometrist x

January 9, 2011 at 6:11 PM  
Blogger Rachel said...

Amy, he was on holidays when I need him most LOL His Receptionist went out of her way to secure me an appointment with an Opthamologist next to the PA.

January 9, 2011 at 6:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

How dare he take holidays! :D Was it dark haired receptionist? she is soooooo lovely.

January 9, 2011 at 8:02 PM  
Blogger Rachel said...

Ophthalmologist? :P Yes, long, long dark hair. She was able to pull strings and squeeze me in the very next day - first appointment of the day and he was able to pick up the Horner's Syndrome within minutes - sent me straight to the PA for the MRI. (nevermind that the LH spent hours with me and weren't able to diagnose it)

January 9, 2011 at 8:23 PM  

Post a Comment

<< Home

View older posts up the top in the sidebar >>>>