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Saturday 24 April 2010

Trying to Keep busy and confusion at the doctors

It seems as though I have been neglecting the blog recently. It’s not that I have forgotten about it, but I don’t have much to write about. Nothing has changed, I just waiting for the extraction process in a couple of weeks.

I’ve had a bit of an ear infection (I think) it has been aching all week and my throat has been sore on one side. If it still hurts on Monday I’m going to go to my local Doctor. Talking of which, that is something that I had a bit of a problem with this week…

bonefosI needed to renew my Bonefos tablets, so I dropped off a request for the repeat prescription at my doctors a week ago on the Friday and they told me it would be ready for collection on the Monday. So sure enough on Monday I went back in the morning to collect it, only to be told that it wasn’t done as I no longer have the ability to request these tablets on repeat prescription! I asked why. Well you haven’t requested them for the last couple of months, the receptionist said. I explained that the hospital provided the last couple of months supply along with my last two cycles of chemo therapy tablets etc.

Bear in mind that these are the tablets that I have to take for the rest of my life.  Perhaps they knew something I didn’t !!!

The receptionist said she would speak to one of the Doctors and would I be able to call in later to collect it. ‘OK’ I said and went back later on to collect it. However; it wasn’t ready (again). For some reason they couldn’t write me the prescription and wanted to know the name of the people that wrote the last lot at the hospital (perhaps they thought I was selling them on the black market or was a secret drug smuggler). I didn’t remember the surnames but only the first names of those at the Oncology unit at the hospital, which I provided to them. After waiting for about half an hour in the waiting room, I was then told that they need to have faxed confirmation from the hospital before providing the prescription. Guess what … they apologised and asked if I wanted to wait (which could be some time) or call back later on. With the risk of catching an infection in the waiting area, I decided to go home and yet again go back later on.

I also said I would call the oncology unit to see if I could speed the process up. So as soon as I got in, which is only about 5 minutes away I called the hospital and spoke to Dee and explained the situation. Dee wasn’t aware of any request for a fax, but would speak to the receptionist who was away from her desk and let me know if there was a problem. They are very efficient at the hospital and nothing is too much trouble for them. (why can’t everywhere be the same). When I put the phone down I realised there was a message waiting for me, so I called 1571 and had a listen. It was left about 2 minutes after leaving the doctors to say that they had received the fax and the prescription was now ready. So I finally got my prescription later on  that afternoon.

The Chemist is only around the corner so I took the prescription there to collect, only to be told that they only had half of them in stock and gave me  a slip to collect the rest another day. The pharmacist was very helpful though and I have now arranged for them to collect the prescription from the Doctor for me and prepare for collection in advance. It wasn’t too much trouble to collect the rest of the tablets another day as I had to go back to the doctors to collect some paper work that I was waiting for them to complete that was taking them over three weeks to organise, but that’s another story!

So apart from that bit of a problem, nothing much has happened. I do feel a lot better not being on the rest of my medication and chemo, but obviously that is short lived and I know that I have a lot to go through in the next few weeks once the extraction process starts.

I’m trying to do as much as I can physically as well at the moment, but although I feel as though my mind thinks that I can do as things as normal, my body doesn’t. When I try to do the things I used to do like do some jobs around the house etc I get tired really quickly and sometimes need to go for a lie down afterwards for rest. I don’t want to end up just sitting on the sofa all day, so when I can I go for short walks and rest when I feel tired.  That might be me just getting old though and nothing to do with my illness!

I will be glad when I am the other side of the transplant and can concentrate on getting back to a normal life (well nearly) for while.