And here, as promised in the last post, is the less happy post.
I had a telephone conversation with a rheumatology consultant this morning, as they don’t want people going to hospital. I’m happy with that as I didn’t want to go either, even before the rise of Covid 19.
The outcome was that as I now have three more fingers swelling up I qualify for treatment. If I had only two affected joints, despite the difficulty and pain, I would not qualify for more than a quick-fix injection. I now have to wait for a nurse to ring me and arrange the prescription.
The fingers are now going down again, so with any luck I will get the prescription before another flare up.
After a week or more of conflicting government advice about risk and isolation the consultant said I am considered medium risk and should go out for exercise but avoid going into shops. That should be interesting when we return to work…
Then Julia got as telephone call from the doctor. Her blood test appointment was cancelled again. Then, when she objected, the doctor read her notes and reinstated it. I suspect they were just trying to cancel as much as possible.
The new arrangement is that we have to go down to the surgery at 1.45 pm, where they will take blood. This has to be done before 2.00pm to get it to the lab.
Woman on a Mission
They will not be taking her blood pressure – she has been told to go and buy her own machine and telephone the surgery with the results.
No, I’m not making it up.
Her risk category is high, but she is, according to the doctor, still allowed to go shopping. This is handy, as we need to buy a blood pressure machine. We tried online but there was a virtual queue at Boots of over 20,000 just to get online. There was no queue at Amazon but they wanted £4.49 for postage and packing and another £4.49 for express delivery which was 3 days. Three days is not “express”, and £8.98 is taking the mickey.
So there we are – a week into lockdown and Julia is high risk. However, unlike medium-risk me, she is allowed to go into shops, and most likely, to go back to work next week.
Again, I am not making this up.
Here are some pictures from our trip out for medical advice and a blood pressure machine.
Most of the people queuing outside the surgery were waiting for the pharmacy to open, as it has restricted hours. The pharmacy we went to in Sherwood was only letting in two customers at a time. Julia managed to get both the blood pressure machine and a packet of paracetamol. This is ironic. The pain-killing gel has not been working on my fingers and I’ve been leaving out last packet of paracetamol in case we become ill. Now that my fingers are no longer painful we have managed to get more pills.
Pharmacy Queue – with hindsight we should have joined this one
All the shops seem to have queuing systems now. We are going out to join one shortly, because, when we got home, we found that the blood pressure machine only has two batteries packed with it and needs four. They are AAA. If they were AA we would have plenty because I use them in my camera.
No wonder Julia’s blood pressure is high.
Don’t believe the packet – batteries were definitely not included!
Good grief.
🙂
It might be a sad and frustrating time but at least you tell it in such an engaging way!
Yes, some advice beggars belief.
🙂 Thank you.
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This is a tale of depressing malfunctions. Of a whole bunch of things. I greatly hope I won’t need a doctor during the course of this epidemic–not just for Covid19, but anything else that smacks people. Good luck with everything.
Once we got past the feeling of being cooped up we have started to enjoy our time together, interrupted only by Julia’s clients ringing up to talk when they are bored, even though we are actually on leave.
A sorry tale but all too believable. Our older son is battling through the dense thickets of rubbish which surround potential help for the self employed. When all is said and done though, I am quite impressed by evidence of orderly queuing. There may be hope for us yet.
Yes, the help for the self-employed is a long way off yet.
I’d be more impressed with evidence of the robust supply chains they talked about.
‘Batteries’ were included, only not as many as needed. They gave two since that way they could say batteries in the plural and be considered accurate. Did you get that from Donald Trump?
I hope all gets better soon for you both. What a hassle. We went to the recycling/garbage dump today and the lines were very long and we waited in them for very long. It seemed that almost every man in town, and a few of us who are not men, wanted to get out of the house and were happy to sit in line for an hour to chuck a bag of rubbish into the offocial dumpster and then leave. We had many bags of recycling paper, plastic, tins, glass, and were thrilled to get rid of them all, and yet the majority of the people seemed to have one little bag and that reason to get out of the house safely, in their own vehicles, not giving nor getting cooties.
🙂 Yes, I’m desperately trying to think of excuses to get out, even for a few minutes.
Yard to putter in? Any back doors or plants or tools to check on? Can you throw something light outdoors if there’s a breeze and then follow it to pick it up? If your ventriloquist skills are good, you can feign all kinds of noises that need to be investigated outdoors–
Some good suggestions. I’m afraid my north-facing, sloping garden with steps holds little attraction for a man with a bad knee and a stick. Ventriloquism, on the other hand…
No wonder is right. Right now, the situation everywhere is surreal.The virus has sucker-punched even the wealthiest of countries. How long will it take us to get back to our feet, I wonder?
Fortunately the local newsagent came up trumps and we are now able to put the batteries back in the TV remote. Phew! 🙂
As for recovery – who can tell? We will just establish a new normal and carry on, I suppose. Ignorance is bliss!
Yes, that is all we can do.
🙂
I think a new normal is where all this is going now. Let us hope the power grid stays up.
And the internet!