Under The Weather

Hello dear readers!

Today you join a tired and slightly worried blogger.

It is, as is my custom, a week since I last sat down (well you know what I mean), to put virtual pen to virtual paper and to be quite honest those seven days have not been amongst my finest. In fact, containing, as they did, a visit to a neurologist, five days off work, and several dizzy spells, I think they can be counted amongst the worst of recent times.

Allow me to elucidate.

The Brain  Drain

It was, if we count backwards, the seventh of those days when I first began feeling not quite right. This is not to say that I in anyway felt ill. There were no sniffle, no pains, no digestive contents being ejected from any orifices, and no blood from, well, anywhere (thankfully).

What there was though was a subtle but persistent feeling of things being ‘off’. Yeah I know, that is a particularly naff way of explaining it, but it is about as close as I can put it. Probably the nearest thing to a symptom that I can tell you about is a bone-deep weariness. Not the kind of tired, as Maureen Johnson once very aptly said, that sleep fixes. Instead, this is one that hangs around. Washing me out. Robbing me of concentration and motivation, and leaving me feeling as weak as a particularly puny kitten. Fatigue is probably the word I’m so vainly searching for.

Not From Concentrate

The effect is not unlike that that I suffer when low on B12 (see here), a jab I had less than two weeks back and which should not be a contributory factor to my present condition. As time went on, I also noticed a strange visual component to the way I was feeling, A soft focus blurriness to things, like someone had applied a small amount of Vaseline to the lenses of my eyes, especially at the edges. There is also a slight lack of focus, as if my eyes don’t want to bear down too heavily on what I’m looking at but have developed an abiding interest in, well, just about anything else.

Now, I’ve never been the most concentrated person in the world. Often I’m accused of being in la la land (not the film) but this is different and it’s more than a little concerning. It meant that, coming to the end of my probation at work, and getting things right being somewhat of a premium at the moment to ensure that said probation is passed, I felt compelled to take some time off work. I had an appointment already booked for Wednesday to see a consultant neurologist about an unrelated matter (the tremor I had discovered in my fingers) so I decided to lie low until that was completed.

Whether this was a wise choice, I think only time will tell. I do know that I would not have felt confident in doing the job to the bes of my abilities though, especially as, by this point I was beginning to get odd moments of dizziness thrown into the mix. This continued throughout Monday and Tuesday.

A Matter of Mind

And so Wednesday came. Neither myself, nor my lovely lady wife, Tina, were particularly looking forward to the appointment, especially as, by this time, we had worked out that our chosen surgery, was at a hospital that was a ridiculously long way away. With the obligatory wrong turning and a slight mistyping of a postcode thrown into the mix, it took an hour and a half to get there. Having said that, distance was possibly quite low down on our list of concerns.

I have, as you can possibly imagine, not been a stranger to the doctors waiting room throughout my life. This was the first time I had seen a neurologist though, and as my newest symptoms felt pretty neurological to me I was beginning to feel a little apprehensive. Although I’m pretty used to my body letting me down, I’ve always been able to rely on my, admittedly limited, mental acuity. Matters of the brain and neural network then are just a little bit of a foreign country to me. Possibly fuelled by too much exposure to grumpy diagnosticians on TV, visions of CAT scans and wires being fitted to my temples loomed large in my imagination. I really needn’t have worried.

The wonderfully named Doctor Cockshoot (stop tittering at the back!) was certainly no Victor Frankenstein. A softly spoken, friendly man, adept at putting people at their ease, he asked a few questions, got me to perform a few seemingly bizarre actions, including patting the top of my head, and, basically, gave me a clean bill of health. It wasn’t Parkinson’s Disease, I was told. This was good as it wasn't something I’d previously considered (although Tina apparently had). The shaky hands were put down to ‘essential tremors’ and the good doctor didn’t necessarily need to see me again, although he wasn’t formally discharging me, and he did need me to get a full blood work-up done.

The Impatient Patient

Due to the unique way he NHS is funded, and the fact that this appointment was at 6pm, I am still waiting for the blood to be taken. This is something that will occur once the local GP has received a letter telling them exactly what is required, but I’m assuming this will be a thorough testing of the vital functions and will require more than one little phial of the red stuff.

Until then I’m stuck in limbo. I still feel unbalanced and unfocussed, still get the odd dizzy spell for no good reason, (Tina says my pulse races a bit when this happens), and am still having the same issues with my vision. At least the big scary has been ruled out though, and at least there is less risk of imminent hospitalisation. As myself and the Mrs are going away to an undisclosed location in less than three weeks this is more than welcome news. Still as a (not The) good book says ‘Waiting is’.

Until next time...