Blood test sorted – for this month at least!
January 23, 2019 at 12:28 pm | Posted in arthrits, arthrits, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, joint pai, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 6 CommentsTags: arthritis, blood test, early, freezing, RA, receptionist, rhematoid arthritis, Rheumatoid arthritis, surgery
Incredible – the surgery being polite and helpful! What’s going on?!
I just phoned the surgery to book my annual arthritis review with the nurse, and she asked if I’d had the fasting blood test yet, as should have in advance. I explained that I’d tried but unfortunately I’d been in twice and they’d run out of slots (you have to turn up on the morning, you can’t normally book an appointment.) She explained that half the staff are off sick at the moment and they’re really struggling – I really appreciated the frankness and honestly, and let’s face it, with a combination of the stress they’re under a waiting room full of germy patients every day, it’s hardly surprising!
She said that the best thing to do was come really early and wait outside – which is interesting because that’s something they were VERY strongly discouraging a few years ago and I know the phlebotomist I saw last time was moaning that if people would only spread themselves out a bit and not all come first thing, they wouldn’t have the problem – obviously no one’s talking to each other again!
Anyway, I pointed out that thanks to my arthritis I couldn’t come and stand outside for 20 minutes in the freezing cold just to try and get a ticket – there’s no seating out there at all and no shelter from the rain.
She then said that if I didn’t mind a really early appointment the nurses were running an early clinic in February to try to catch up. Well – that solves all my problems – no queuing outside, no waiting for an hour to be seen because I’ve got the first appointment, no having to take time out of work time because it’s well before work starts, and no sitting starving because I’ve missed breakfast – because I’ll have had the test before my normal breakfast time.
The only issue for me is going to be remembering about it! Thank goodness for technology. I’ve put a note on my online calendar reminding myself the day before to set up an alarm on my phone and iPad to wake me up half an hour earlier than normal as the appointment is actually at normal ‘getting up time’.
Do as I say, not as I do!
February 12, 2018 at 4:29 pm | Posted in arthrits, arthrits, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, joint pai, joint pai, Me, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 6 CommentsTags: blood results, blood test, bloods, consultant, Dr Delightful, flare, hospital, methotrexate, MTX, RA, registrar, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatology, rheumatology nurse
I’m sure I’ve banged on at least once or twice on this blog about how important it is for the patient to manage their own illness as much as possible, and how important it is to keep a track yourself of your blood test results etc.
Weeeeeell, I’ve had this dratted disease for over ten years now and for quite a lot of those years I assiduously kept track of my blood test results, which never showed anything in all that time. And eventually, what with a change in the system that meant we only see the Rheumy nurse once ever three months, and they stopped issuing booklets with the results in, and given that the results never showed anything, I stopped looking. They’re available to me on line but I just didn’t bother.
So, fast forward to my last flare, not that long ago, a couple of weeks ago in fact, when the doc told me my bloods were up and I said ‘But that never happens’, turns out it happens more often than i thought.
I mentioned in that last post that my hospital appointment had been cancelled, and they originally said the next date was July (!) but then I got a call to say they were putting in a clinic to make up for the cancelled one, and that was last week … so off I toddled dutifully to the hospital. As could be virtually guaranteed, although my knee played up slightly the day before the appointment, it was fine on the day – thankfully the steroids had done their job! Continue Reading Do as I say, not as I do!…
The frustrations of not having a relationship with your doctor
June 29, 2016 at 4:32 pm | Posted in arthrits, arthrits, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, joint pai, joint pai, Me, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 7 CommentsTags: aches, arthritis, blood test, cats, doctor, flare, flare-up, GP, hospital, joint pain, knee, medicine, methotrexate, MTX, NHS, nurse, pain, R.A., RA, rhematoid arthritis, rheumatoid, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA), rheumatology, stiffness
Thanks to the state of the NHS today (which, if you read this blog often you will know I harp on about endlessly) it is simply not possible to have a relationship with your GP these days (unless you’re incredibly lucky or live on some tiny island that actually has its own GP or something!) My GP practice has around 10 GPs plus locums. It’s pot luck who you get to speak to when you call and they phone you back, and then if they decide you should be seen you won’t see the person you spoke to that morning.
It also seems that they don’t have much of a relationship with the hospital and seem to have some sort of mythic belief in the power of the rheumatology helpline, as I’ve also mentioned before.
The myth
The patient calls the GP because they have an RA flare. This is a shocking waste of the GP’s time because these lucky, .lucky patients have an RA helpline that they can call and that will solve all their problems. They can speak to a lovely nurse* straight away and the nurse will wave her magic wand, waggle her magic pixie ears and solve the patient’s problem.
* Actually that’s the only true bit – the one we have at the moment IS a lovely nurse!
The facts
The lovely nurse, or even a secretary or receptionist, never EVER answers the helpline. It is an answerphone. That’s the way it’s set up. It’s not an answerphone on odd occasions when they’re exceptionally busy, it’s ALWAYS an answerphone. The message on the helpline says something like: ‘If you’re calling about a non-RA related problem, please call your GP. If you’re calling to change an appointment, please call reception. If you’re calling about an urgent need, please call your GP. If you’re calling to buy fish, please contact your fish monger. If you’re calling to moan about Brexit, please contact your MP. If you’re calling because you’re a moron, voted ‘Leave’ and can’t work out what a helpline is for, please call someone else and bother them. Now, if you really, really want to leave a message, we suppose you can. Give us your hospital number and name and telephone number and we’ll try to call you back in 24 hours – but no promises mind.’
I don’t know about you (actually I probably do, if you have RA) but I consider a flare pretty urgent.
While in an ideal world I would sit back on a couch, watch the telly and let my servants feed me grapes while I rested my knee and waited to see if it would clear up on its own, I do actually have a life (and no servants, and hubby is great but also has a life, and the cat just ain’t interested in helping), so I can’t just sit about and rest it. On that basis I can’t wait potentially 48 hours or more for the helpline to phone, and the nurse say, ‘Call your GP and get some prednisolone’ because then I can’t call the GP until Monday as 48 hours is Friday morning and by the time I’ve heard back from the helpline the GP has run out of appointments. By that time I will have been flaring for over a week!
What Polly did Next
So … I went to the appointment grudgingly granted me by the grumpy GP. (Ooh, nice alteration that penguin!) Fortunately it’s with a much more pleasant locum GP than the one I spoke to on the phone. Unfortunately of course she doesn’t know me from Adam (or strictly speaking, as a doctor, she can probably spot I’m not Adam from the wobbly bits, so I should say she doesn’t know me from Eve). This means that she doesn’t know if I’m a moron or not, and therefore has to assume I am, as we always have to cater for the lowest common denominator.
‘How can I help you?’
‘I’m having an RA flare in my knees, as usually particularly in my left knee. It’s stiff, not very flexible and painful at times.’
‘Have you called the helpline, because really -‘
‘Yes.’
‘Oh, and what did they say?’
‘I said I’d called them, not that I’d spoken to them!’ I then explained, gently, ’cause she was a locum and therefore wouldn’t necessarily know any better, the realities of the helpline. (I didn’t mention Brexit or fish mongers.)
‘Hmm, you had a blood test only yesterday and your bloods were hardly elevated at all.’
‘They never are.’ The mere fact that my bloods are even a smidge elevated is a pretty strong indication of a flare with me. Sometimes I flare and there’es no indication whatsoever in the bloods. Now this is where a doctor relationship would come in handy. If she’d actually known me, known that I’ve had RA for nearly ten years, known that I’ve had umpteen flares in my left knee, known that blood tests are not a helpful indicator with me, known that I have a brain, we could have skipped the pointless bits, more of which are coming up.
‘Ah, well let’s have a look.’ Prod, poke.
‘Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh!’
‘Did that hurt when I pressed there?’
‘No, I just thought I’d make screamy gurgling noises for fun.’ (Nope, I didn’t really say that either, I just said yes.)
‘Can you bend it?’
‘This much.’ Demonstrated a very slight bend.
‘Ah. Have you tried pain killers… like paracetamol?’
I’m afraid I just looked at her and laughed, finally managing to choke out a ‘yes’, followed by ‘interspersed with ibuprofen.’ She looked amazed that I’d been able to think of painkillers all by myself.
‘Well I’ll prescribe a course of steroids. Now if they don’t work, we’ll have to consider other possibilities like osteoarthritis, as they should work for RA.’
‘Well, they’ve worked every other time I’ve had them, so touch wood that they will this time too.’
‘Oh … right.’ Look of mild astonishment, either that I’d had them before (it’s in the notes dear) or that I actually knew that I’d had them before, who knows.
So I thanked her very nicely, ’cause I’m a well brung-up penguin … and I might run into her again, and off I went to the chemist to get my steroids.
Again, after nearly ten years of RA, I think I recognise an RA flare when I see one … I really hope I’m not proved wrong and that the steroids do work again this time and it doesn’t turn out to be OA. That would be sooooo embarrassing after this post!
So angry my glasses are steaming up
February 22, 2016 at 12:23 pm | Posted in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 4 CommentsTags: blood test, GP, GP surgery, injection, methotrexate, MTX, nurse, RA, rhematoid arthritis, rheumatology, sickness, surgery
At the behest of the hospital rheumy nurse, I’ve just been down to the surgery to have a blood test, since as I’m hopefully now getting more methotrexate into my system with the injections, they need to make sure that I’m not overdosing.
I got to the surgery, I went over to where the board hangs up where you collect your number and wait to be called for a blood test – no board. I headed back to the reception queue – the MASSIVE reception queue, the slow reception queue – in fact it wasn’t slow, it was immobile.
It took me 20 minutes to get to the front of the queue to say, ‘Where are the blood tests?’ only to be met by a blank look and, ‘Isn’t there a board …’
‘No, that’s why I’ve been standing in this queue for the last twenty minutes.’
‘Oh … well one young lady went home sick so perhaps they’re not doing them.’
‘It would have been helpful to put a notice up to save me queuing, and probably halve your queue at the same time!’
‘Oh, isn’t there a notice up? I’ll talk to someone about that right now.’
‘Don’t bother – they finish at 11 anyway and it’s 11 now.’
At least I needed to go anyway to get a printout of my new repeat prescription with the Metoject pen and then put that in to be reviewed by a doctor.
I sympathise with the sick phlebotomist; I sympathise with the rushed off their feet reception staff; where I draw the line is attempting to sympathise with blatant incompetence. How much effort would it have been for one of the receptionists (perhaps while she was getting coffee, as one of them did while I was queuing) to write a quick note saying, ‘No blood tests today due to staff sickness. Please try tomorrow but ring first.’ Not long I suggest. It also wouldn’t take long to inform all the receptionists (all three of them) that there are no blood tests, and yet clearly that hadn’t been done either.
It’s a good job I wasn’t going for a blood pressure check as my blood is boiling – at least it’s keeping me warm on a cold day!
You know you’re stupidly busy when …
June 9, 2015 at 11:04 am | Posted in arthrits, Me, rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 1 CommentTags: blood test, doctor, phlebotomist, Rheumatoid arthritis, surgery
… the only time you can arrange to meet with your mum to give her some important advice about embroidery is at the doctor’s surgery!
In fairness, it’s partly because she’s stupidly busy too and away for the rest of this week!
We both needed a blood test, and we knew there’d be a bit of a wait, so we met, appropriately enough, in the waiting room! You may remember from my last post, things hadn’t exactly gone according to plan with the blood test attempt, but this time it couldn’t have gone better! When I got there, mum was actually having her test, having arrived a little while before me. It couldn’t have worked out better. As I sat down, she came out from the phlebotomist, we had just enough time to go through her needlework problem and I got called in!
I only waited about ten minutes to be seen and I needed that ten minutes to sort mum out!
Hurrah for the surgery – and I don’t often say that! When things run well, they run really well … a pity they don’t run well a little more consistently!
The latest on the blood test fiasco
January 29, 2014 at 3:12 pm | Posted in Me, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 8 CommentsTags: appointment, blood test, disaster, NHS, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatology, rheumy nurse, walk-in
Here’s the thing. You may remember that I said back in November that the hospital were happy for us to have 3-monthly blood-tests for methotrexate? Well it turns out that I’d misunderstood. It appears that the hospital are happy for us to have monthly blood tests but only see the surgery rheumy nurse three-monthly. They are NOT happy to have methotrexate patients checked only three-monthly.
Well that would mean attending the walk-in blood-test appointments, and if you reading my most recent post on this you’ll know they’re a joke – or they would be a joke if they weren’t a tragedy. Today I attended my three-monthly test and had a wee chat to my lovely rheumy nurse about the monthly tests.
They seem to have put the blood tests on a Wednesday now, although my last notification was for a Thursday – perhaps it’s both now. If so, it’s not helping. The nurse freely admitted that the system was a disaster and I witnessed the rugby scrum as the board with the little numbers stuck to it was brought out by the receptionist.
Walking-sticks flying, old people beat others out of the way as they charged toward the board, knocking down the poor receptionist who was trying to attach it the wall. An ambulance had to be called to cart off the trampled people when the scrum was over.
OK, I exaggerated just a tad there, but not as much as you’d think!
In spite of the fact that there’s a notice up saying ‘Unless you have a really important personal reason or work, please don’t come in before 9:30 for the blood test’ I don’t think one person in the scrum was under 80. Now the thing is, from experience they all know that there’s going to be a 1.5-2 hour wait, and they have lives too – why on earth should they wait 2 hours just because they don’t have work – so I don’t blame anyone, of any age for coming in at 8:15 plus rather than 9:30 – but the whole thing is just a failure … and surprise surprise, staff are going off sick with stress – so would I be, I think, under the circumstances!
The only light at the end of the tunnel maybe, maybe, maybe, the hospital will see that people are not ‘complying’ with their monthly tests and then tell the surgery they have to reinstate tests with the rheumy nurse each month – I don’t suppose that will happen though. They’ll probably just tell the patients off instead.
It’s not the lack of rheumy nurse I object to – it’s the lack of an appointment time , and a sensible one at that, that doesn’t assume each patient can be dealt with in 2.5 seconds or whatever their crazy trial showed!
Three-monthly blood tests
November 19, 2013 at 9:56 pm | Posted in arthrits, rheumatoid arthritis, fibromyalgia, joint pai, Me, rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 7 CommentsTags: arthritis, blood test, doctor, GP, hospital, methotrexate, MTX, NHS, R.A., rhematoid arthritis, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatology, surgery
The hospital has decreed that patients on methotrexate for RA no longer need monthly blood tests – they will now be three-monthly instead. Now I don’t have a problem with having my blood tests every three months – as yet I’ve never had a single blip in my tests and if the hospital say three-monthly is safe I suppose I have to believe them and not just assume this is purely a cynical money-saving exercise: ‘Hey, what’s the odd life lost compared to a few thousand pounds saved, eh? Let’s do it! Right lads, down the pub …’
What I do have a problem with is the fact that they can’t book tests three months in advance, and yet we’ve been told to contact the rheumy nurse to make the next appointment. There IS NO WAY to contact her except by making an appointment to see her … a bit of a circular argument! My sensible and lovely nurse realised this straight away and in fact pointed it out to me with a comment on the lines of ‘I’ve told them ALL individually in reception, so don’t take any nonsense if they tell you that you should have booked it through me!’
OK, so that’s hopefully sorted out even before it becomes a problem, but how crazy that we can’t just book the tests when we see the nurse!
The surgery have also arranged monthly ‘walk-in clinic’ tests for the months we don’t see the rheumy nurse … but that’s a whole nuther story … a post to come in a day or so.
Bloodless penguin – and more surgery hassles
September 24, 2013 at 9:57 pm | Posted in rheumatoid arthritis (RA) | 3 CommentsTags: blood, blood test, GP, phlebotomist, Rheumatoid arthritis, rheumatology, rheumatology nurse, surgery
I mentioned to the facilities manager as I left work this morning that I was off for a blood test. When I saw him later he asked, ‘So did they manage to confirm you had blood then?’ Well – actually it was a bit of a struggle! The first attempt to prove I had blood was a dismal failure – in went the needle, out came … nothing. The rhuemy nurse waggled the needle about – nothing happened … except that it hurt … she waggled it about some more … OUCH! We mutually agreed that perhaps trying another spot would be better. It wasn’t. Hmm … I’d walked in rapidly and everything, the blood should have been flowing … but perhaps the problem was that it had all rushed to my head a moment before!
‘Why would it do that?’ I hear you cry. Because she’d just told me that the system of monthly blood tests was changing – in fact it was going. The new guidelines from the hospital are that we only need three-monthly blood tests done by the rheumy nurse. Well OK … that’s fine by me… but here’s the rub.
At the moment I go in for my blood test, have a chat about my arthritis and general health, query anything that’s bothering me rhuemy-wise (usually not a lot, ’cause I’m lucky most of the time!) and book the next appointment. Now the appointment times are being reduced, so I will only see her every three months and have less time for a chat about how things are going because she will have less time per patient, even though she’s not seen us for three months. On top of that – she can no longer book the next appointment – because, mind-bogglingly, ‘the system’ won’t allow booking three months ahead!
I do wonder how much this has to do with the computer system and how much it has to do with the fact that the further in advance appointments are booked, statistically the more patients are likely to fail to attend! So now, instead of a simple month-by-month process of blood tests and booking, I have to remember to do an extra thing – phone about three weeks before my next test is due and book it.
Well, that’s not so bad – after all it’s only three-monthly, isn’t it? I’m still spending less time than I was before attending monthly? Not so fast … I am also supposed to attend in the two intervening months for a 2.5 minute appointment with a phlebotomist, who will just have time to say ‘Hi’, take the blood and throw me out again – but on top of that, that won’t even be an appointment but a ‘walk in’. So if they’re not busy (hah, what are the chances of that, especially as I happen to know they’re short staffed) I could get seen straight away, but if they are busy I could be waiting who knows how long.
I told my nurse I would probably simply not bother attending the phlebotomy walk-ins and she said she thought I would not be alone – she’d heard the same from a number of patients! Of course you could say, and quite rightly, that we’re putting our own health at risk doing that and the service is there … but in six years I’ve never had a blood issue, and I do have a full-time job and I don’t have time to sit about for an hour waiting for a blood test, so … we’ll see.
Anyway, back to today’s blood test – when she scraped me off the ceiling and calmed me down and got the blood flowing round the body again, she was finally able to draw blood … which, I hope, will be fine as usual!
Blood test delay – well handled?
July 19, 2013 at 11:47 am | Posted in Me | 2 CommentsTags: blood test, doctor, GP, receptionist
I went into the surgery for my blood test yesterday. I got there in good time and signed in, waited until ten minutes after the appointment was due and went up to the desk to make sure the auto sign-in had worked properly. The receptionist asked who the appointment was with and I didn’t know as it wasn’t my usual nurse, so she found me by my name and assured me I was signed in. I then asked her whether I was the next patient and she said there was one person in front of me.
While not delighted, at least I knew there was a delay so I went and sat down again. Ten minutes later another receptionist called out ‘Is Pollyanna Penguin here?’ and I went up to the desk. It was now 20 minutes past my appointment time. She explained that the nurse I should have been seeing wasn’t in and that another nurse had hoped she could see both sets of patients but was (understandably) running late. She assured me I would be seen if I wanted to wait, but said that otherwise they could re-book for a week’s time, if that was OK.
This is a vast improvement on the way things ran a year or so ago, when the receptionists would just let you sit there all day, and if you went up to ask what was going on they didn’t know! I’ve had a couple of bad experiences like that in the past, so I thought this was a pretty good way of handling it.
The only thing is … when I went up to ask after ten minutes they knew the situation, so I wish someone had thought to tell me then. I know, I know – it’s only another ten minutes, right? But still, I had a busy day yesterday and I could have spent those ten minutes more productively at work than sitting in the doctor’s waiting room playing Angry Birds and feeling like one too!
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