Two posts in two days!
Following on from yesterday, just posted this on the Facebook myeloma group:
You may remember that I have a large myeloma-induced lesion / cyst in my left hip, above the socket. That means I'm at high risk of a rather nasty fracture, and I have an October appointment at the Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital to explore surgical options for repair. All very well until I tripped over a paving slab yesterday and fell heavily on the side of my left hip. "Oh s**t", I thought on the way down, "I've destroyed my pelvis altogether..."
Fortunately not that bad.
A couple of kind people helped me up and spotted the hearing aid dislodged from my left ear. I sat on a handy low wall for a while and - slowly and carefully - made it back home. Then the adrenalin faded away and it started to hurt, partly in the left groin - just like the pain when I fractured my hip years ago that led to finding the lesion and my MM diagnosis, if a bit less acute. Lots of other pains here and there, and walking around the flat very slow and difficult. I took some ibuprofen and decided to leave it overnight. Soft tissue damage (definitely!) or something worse (possibly)?
No improvement to speak of this morning and thought that a precautionary X-ray or CT might be a good idea so 'phoned Orthopaedics at my hospital (Broomfield, Chelmsord) as the consultant there had told me to get back to him in event of any problems. Naturally he's off on holiday and his secretary's on annual leave until next week.
The receptionist I spoke to wanted to ask colleagues and said she would call back. And inside five minutes she did, with three options for me. Call the RNOH and ask to bring the appointment forward, try again with the secretary on Monday, or call my GP and get him to arrange an X-ray.
So I organised a cup of coffee and a few biscuits to sustain me through a long "Your call is important to us, you are number 38 in the queue..." and rang the GP surgery.
Answered inside five minutes, and offered an emergency appointment (with my own GP!) in forty minutes.
Met my new GP for the first time - absolutely lovely man who immediately issued a "Super-Urgent" X-ray request which should produce an appointment in a few days. He gave us a second copy of it to take to A&E if nothing by Friday. He suspects a pubic ramus fracture (and so do I, although not a major one).
I asked the doctor if he was familiar with myeloma. He said yes, had diagnosed it maybe ten times and we had a quick conversation about paraproteins and free light chains. He also said he thought I had been completely right to decline transplant!
So - although I haven't had that X-ray yet - an absolute 10/10 for the NHS on this - both hospital and GP. The NHS may well be broken but it isn't dead yet.
The new CPAP mask I bought recently is a big improvement. It's quite some time since I had one of these!
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