Tag Archives: blood tests

A Quick Post

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I passed my blood anti-coagulant blood test, and as a reward I don’t need to go back until 11th December. If it all goes well my next test will be either 25th December or 1st January. I may have to rethink this.

On the other hand, I had a text from the surgery telling me that my doctor wants to see me for a face to face consultation and that I must ring to arrange it. This seems an odd way to offer congratulations so I’m expecting a lecture on my health. More precisely, I’m expecting a lecture on my cavalier attitude to my health.

We filled today, when not being texted, with a visit to Springfields in Lincolnshire, followed by a visit to my father, who trounced me at Snakes and Ladders before defeating me at several games of dominoes. He may not know what day it is, and he can’t remember my name, but he’s still got his competitive edge.

My sister complains that I have it too. She says it as if it’s a bad thing.

 

I get organised, and get punished for it

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Tonight, in an organised fashion, I called at the surgery on my way home. It seemed to be a popular time as several other people arrived at the same time. One beat me to the desk and queued behind the woman who was already there.

One didn’t quite beat me to the desk but I held the door and let her go ahead. Before you start criticising me for chavinism reflect on this – I didn’t hold the door because she was a weak and feeble woman: I held the door because my parents brought me up to have good manners.

So, there I was, fourth in the queue. The first woman was one of those people who take a long time over everything, can’t take no for an answer and have no awareness of how many people are queueing behind them thinking of violence.

The second person was unremarkable and finished her enquiry in a couple of minutes.

The third person, the woman I’d held the door for, spent the entire wait hacking and coughing without bothering to cover her mouth. I presume her parents had never told her that coughs and sneezes spread diseases. Fortunately, because I’d let her go first, she was doing it over the people in front. Virtue, as they say, is its own reward.

Eventually I arrived at the front of the line. I picked up my prescription with no problem. The blood test form, however, was another thing altogether. It turned out that there were two of them. One is for blood. This good as the arrangement is that I am having extra samples taken next time I visit phlebotomy.

The other is not for blood. Somehow my agreement to two blood tests on the same day has mutated into a blood test with accompanying urine test. As I can’t see phlebotomy being ecstatic at being presented with a urine sample I suppose I’ll have to go back to the surgery, meaning that doubling up the blood test is saving no time or effort.

I mentioned this to the receptionist, who instantly became blank-faced and started up the Nuremberg Defence. I swear they have a special training school for doctors’ receptionists.

I’m thinking of what I can put in my urine sample to give them a hilarious surprise…

 

More Blood…

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Blood test again, and I went down for 8.20 this time, to avoid the queue.

It started going wrong when I was prevented from entering the car park by a man shouting at the machine in a haughty and peremptory manner (which immediately made me assume he was a doctor).

“I’m at the car park in front of Maternity and the barrier won’t lift!” he said.

They raised it for him. When I pulled up at the barrier I found that he’d neglected to take the ticket from the slot, which would have raised the barrier. It worked for me.

By the time I’d parked, he was walking into Maternity with an expensive leather bag over one shoulder. If he has such trouble extracting a ticket from a slot I can’t imagine he’s much of a gynaecologist.

As I walked across to the blood-letting department it started to rain – small, sharp, freezing droplets.

It got worse when I entered the waiting area and took a ticket. I was 11th in the queue. Not only that, but after doing ten people the service seemed to stop. even the people behind me noticed it, and they weren’t next in the queue or  in a hurry to get out and have breakfast with their wife before going to work.

I had “the trainee” again. She’s making progress because, after two multiple failures she nailed it first time. They now use a piece of arm which hurts more than usual, but if it works I suppose it’s better than multiple stab wounds.

As I walked back to the car it rained. This time the drops were bigger and less icy. They were still cold though. The roof of the shelter over the ticket machine, I noticed, is just the right size to channel drips of cold water onto your head as you feed your money into the machine. For an extra £20 in materials they could probably have built a shelter that kept people dry as they paid.

It occurs to me that the NHS is missing a trick. Charles Saatchi once owned a frozen sculpture made from the blood of the artist Marc Quinn. Despite it nearly defrosting in a builder-related incident, he managed to resell it for £1.5 million.

Clearly, as the NHS has plenty of blood going spare, there’s an opening here for an enterprising artist, an Arts Council Grant and one of those marketing companies that knocks out limited editions via the colour supplement on Sundays.

You can do 150 heart valve operations for the cost of one frozen blood sculpture. Or 1,500 cataract operations

I’m not saying that it’s the solution to NHS funding problems but it might help.

 

 

Bits and Pieces

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The featured image is included as an example of what can go wrong in photography for ebay. A highly polished medallion can, for instance, act as a mirror, as you can see from the image of my camera lens.

The case, as you can see, is also a great way of reflecting fluorescent tubes.

I clearly need to add some non-reflective techniques to my repertoire. Some photographs I took of cased coin sets actually reflected my face, leading people to believe that they had been taken by Santa’s less cheerful brother. I didn’t preserve any of them.

The photographs shown below are what the weather looked like on Sunday. It’s difficult to believe when you look back, as wwe had a bit of a heat wave yesterday, with temperature up to 12 degrees C (or 53 degrees F  for those of you who use it).

Snow in Nottingham
Snow in Nottingham (2)

I’m struggling for inspiration tonight – I think it’s leaking from the holes in my arms, as noted, here, here and here. And here too.  Or I may just be looking to increase traffic around the blog by linking to recent posts.  I really should stop reading those articles on Search Engine Optimisation…