What A Relief

I have spent all of this morning in GP's surgeries. First thing this morning I went to my GP's surgery to see if I could get an appointment to see a doctor because I had a very sore area on my nose exactly where one of the nose pads on my glasses sits. I was lucky and managed to get an early appointment that fitted in well with my other task of the day, going back to the GP's surgery where I had been fitted with the ambulatory blood pressure monitor.

I found that I coped pretty well with the machine operating every half hour yesterday. The bleep would alert me that a reading was about to be taken so that I could stop what I was doing and make sure that my arm was still when it was being taken. At 10pm hourly readings started to be taken. The change in timings is because normally at night you do not experience the wide fluctuations that you do during the day, and it is also so that you stand the chance of getting some sleep.

Unfortunately, I have been have a bad week and sleep has not been easy. I am heading towards what is for me probably the most difficult week of the year. It is the week that includes my birthday followed a few days later the anniversary of my husband's death. Even though I have a nice treat (my trip to the theatre with There and Back) programmed into this period, and a day at the Department of Health talking about the benefits of patients having access to their medical records, and in particular for this seminar their pathology results, without consciously thinking about the two difficult dates, my mood has slumped and I am experiencing a severe depressive period. Last night I didn't manage a minute of sleep, although I did lie down and tried to relax as best that I could so as to not slew the blood pressure readings too much.

So after a sleepless night, and with a nose that is so sore that wearing my glasses is almost impossible even though I am blind as a bat without them, I went to my GP's surgery and got a prescription for an antibiotic cream for what appears to be an infection in the skin on my nose and another for some anti-depressants that have a sedative effect to be taken at night (I normally have some at home but I used the last of them up a few weeks ago and I am now so desperate for sleep that I had to get some more) in addition to the others that I take each morning.

After seeing my GP, it was off to the chemist to get the prescriptions filled, and then of to the bus stop to get the first of the buses that I needed to catch to get to the surgery where I had been fitted with the blood pressure monitor so that I could return it for the readings to be downloaded. I was lucky because I didn't have to wait long for either of the buses, and the final reading was taken shortly after I had got off the bus and was walking down the road to the surgery. Five minutes after the last reading, I managed to disentangle myself from the arm cuff, the belt holding the monitor itself, and what seemed like miles of rubber tubing that connected the two together, and then hand it back in at reception.

What a relief to have that thing off my arm. Almost two hours later the marks from the cuff are starting to disappear and I am getting full feeling back in my left arm. Now I have to wait for the results to arrive at my GP's surgery so that we can look at the results and see whether I do indeed have a problem with steadily rising blood pressure, whether my very high pulse rate is a regular occurrence or just an occasional thing, and decisions can be made about what treatment, if any, is necessary.

And I may have a nap this afternoon.