As health-releated retirement blogs go, the list is unending and I shall return to mine shortly but just when I think I’m pulling ahead of Mrs Summerhouse in the ‘things we’ve got wrong with us’ health stakes, she goes and pulls a master stroke, not actually a stroke, but for a while she was worried. In the middle of the night she thinks she’s got Deep Vein Thrombosis (DVT).
After much reading up about DVT on Google (what did we do without it?) she decides it isn’t DVT but simply cramp probably from standing on the step ladder in her flip flops (yes I know it’s foolish), to cut the hedge.
Incidentally in her reading about the topic of DVT she learns that the very worst thing you can do with a blood clot is to massage it because it breaks it up and the bits go to your heart or lungs, both of which are bad places for clots to go. And of course if you think you’ve got cramp this is the first thing (and possibly the last) that you do. Laugh, she nearly went to Bradford. Anyway for a short while she was ahead but now having given her due deference I can get back to me and my health.
Every morning I take two health-related readings – my blood sugar levels and my weight. For a control freak they sound like sensible actions but… the problem is that the readings do not seem to relate to anything that has happened to me in the previous day or even before. Take this morning, my sugar levels were 7.5. Great (for me) but it doesn’t seem to have any logical connection to what I ate /drank the day before. My weight was 13 ½ stone in old money which is as heavy as I’ve been for about three years.
And again this after a fairly light day food and drink-wise. It may be that since I’ve started taking Glicazide every day as recommended by my diabetic nurse, (rather than randomly as decided by me), that it’s caused the weight increase. As I was told it would which is why I tried to restrict my intake of this particular drug.
All very frustrating as is what’s happened with my other health issues and my consequent visits to my doctor (actually two doctors) about a) my prostate and b) my possible Parkinson’s. The first is easily reported – nothing. I suppose I’m in a queue somewhere in cyberspace waiting for an appointment with our over-worked and under-funded health service.
As for b), well better news on the referral front with this one. At least I think so. I’ve got an appointment with the specialist at the end of the month. That’s the good news (and I’m not even talking about the results). The bad news is that it’s on the phone.
I must slightly digress here for a moment. Way back in the days when I worked as an educational psychologist in New Zealand (where distances between schools and our office were quite substantial), a colleague and I used to joke about doing observations by phone. You know the teacher held the phone up to the classroom and we observed. Ridiculous of course.
But it feels a bit as if my ‘dry’ humour has come back to bite me. How the heck can you make judgements about whether somebody has Parkinson’s without face to face direct observations. I may be proved very wrong and ignorant. Let’s hope so.
As for the rest of my list well they come and go – pains in feet, not too bad at the moment, arthritis in hands, rather worse, wobbly, zig-zagging and generally leaning to the left on dog walks, (as observed by Mrs SH) definitely variable and again completely without logic. And don’t get me started on mysterious pains in shoulders, chest and arms. I’m not writing this from the grave so I guess they can’t be signs of a heart attack, which is good.
So there we are and this retirement blog is prompted by Mrs SH and her worries about DVT and what, don’t you know, I’ve managed to make it mostly about me but then to be fair it is my retirement blog so that makes me only moderately self-centred.