You gotta take me back outside

[venta]

About a fortnight ago, I finally took myself off to the doctors. Some my knuckles have been painful since about the beginning of October, and after a bit of poking and prodding she said that yes, I probably was beginning to develop arthritis.

She recommended a two month course of non-steroidal anti-inflammatories, and some blood tests to check that it was just boring you're-getting-old arthritis, not a scary auto-immune kind. Which all seemed perfectly reasonable, except I mentioned that taking NSAIs has given me a bad stomach before. No problems, she'd prescribe me some extra drugs to look after my stomach[*].

So off I went. After a week or so of taking them, I wasn't feeling all that well - I was suffering what someone on my friends' list habitually describes as "digestive unglam". After another couple of days, it had got a lot worse. My stomach felt bulky and uncomfortable, I had persistent gut pain, and large areas of my stomach were really sore to touch. I stopped taking the tablets. It didn't get any better.

Since I had to go in to the surgery for the blood tests, I popped in to the doctor's to enquire. She poked and prodded me, and said hmm. That doesn't sound like a reaction to drugs, that sounds like appendicitis.

So, off I went to Charing Cross hospital[**] A&E, and was seen immediately by a bewildering range of people who all wanted to do poking and prodding, and extract samples. (When the doctor said the hospital would want blood samples, I asked if I could take the ones I'd just given along with me. Apparently not :-)

The surgeon very quickly decided it wasn't appendicitis. Despite my theory that him pushing on my stomach was bloomin' painful, it wasn't painful enough, and there didn't appear to be enough swelling. So he did extra poking and prodding (including a rectal exam, lucky me) and sent me off to be x-rayed and ultrasounded.

After that flurry of activity there was a lot of waiting around at the end of which the surgeon told me that they couldn't find anything wrong with me. They offered me options of remaining in hospital under observation, or of going home and filing it under "one of those things". I took the latter (with instructions to return if anything got worse).

It didn't get worse. Despite being officially informed that there was Nothing Wong, my stomach boldly persisted for a few days with the griping pain. Eventually, seeing that it didn't seem to be achieving anything, it gave up. By Friday last week I felt I was back to normal and resumed eating properly.

Also on Friday, I phoned the surgery to get the blood test results, and apparently there was nothing interesting in them, either. Suppose I should get back on taking the tablets, really.

So, as of now I am Officially Very Healthy. Nothing wrong with me at all. Oh, except that I've now got a cold which, in the way of its kind, is making feel worse than the thing that sent me to hospital ;)

[*] Naproxen and Omeprazole, if anyone cares.
[**] Which is not in Charing Cross, it's in Hammersmith. Not to be confused with Hammersmith hospital, which is in Shepherds Bush.

Comments

[ailbhe]

Oh lordy. I've just been given a diagnosis of Vit D deficiency which could be causing about 1/3 of my symptoms. I hope you find something smilarly straightforward.

[venta.livejournal.com]

That sounds promising - in that it sounds as if you can take supplements and thus improve a whole bunch of symptoms. I hope it works!

[ailbhe]

I love treatable diagnoses.