medication | Pollyanna Penguin's RA Blog

Oops! Pill trays are NOT infallible!

October 7, 2009 at 6:44 pm | Posted in arthrits, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, joint pai, fibromyalgia, Me, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 4 Comments
Tags: arthritis, fatigue, medication, pill tray, pills, R.A., RA, rhematoid arthritis, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), sleep, stress, tablets, tiredness

I wondered why I was feeling so peculiar this morning … put it down to the fact that hubby and I both slept terribly last night, as did half of Norfolk if hubby’s patients’ comments are anything to go by. Now I wonder if it was more than that.

When I got home this evening I went to take my evening pills (augmented at the moment with antibiotics for the lump doing Vesuvius impressions on my arm) and found it empty.

I then had a vague memory of taking my pills after breakfast this morning and thinking, ‘Odd that I forgot to take them before breakfast as I usually do!’

You guessed it – I didn’t forget to take them before breakfast. I had my evening pills about twenty minutes after my morning pills.

I think I should probably be panicking and phoning NHS Direct and stuff, but given that that was now nearly 12 hours ago and I’m still sitting here writing this, I figure there’s probably no need. Luckily the only apparent ‘side effects’ were the desire to eat a horse (not literally of course, although who knows what went into the pasty I ended up having, most unhealthily, for lunch) and a feeling of general wooziness which may have had nothing to do with it given that a) I did have a lousy night and b) I’ve been feeling dopey all week!

It went well!!

August 17, 2009 at 4:34 pm | Posted in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | Leave a comment
Tags: dosage, hospital, medication, methotrexate, MTX, RA, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatology nurse

Well … I saw the rheumy nurse on Friday … and thankfully it was NOT the same one that I’ve seen in the past, and this one was a) human b) non-patronising c) cheerful and, perhaps most importantly, d) helpful! OK, so she read the doctor’s notes all wrong to start with and got in a bit of a muddle, but I’ll forgive her that given the points above! Although, as suspected, having an appointment in August was a bit of a waste of time in a way, at least this nurse says definitely now she’s met me she’s happy for me to phone in September and say if I feel the MTX needs increasing, in which case she will increase it.

Interestingly this nurse is someone that one of my friends has seen in the past and thought was awful … obviously a personality clash, just like the one I had with the previous nurse I saw. At least I’ve been lucky enough to change.

We also discussed this whole three months/ six months between appointments thing and although the news wasn’t good, at least she was frank about it. What it boils down to is they’re underfunded and under-staffed and while they’d love to see me every three months, it ain’t gonna happen. However, they have apparently improved the helpline (hoorah for that as it was rubbish when I used it last!)