To Coin A Phrase (Sorta)
However, a better use for it would be WHERE The F.. er... heck... As in, where the f... have I been...?
The easy answer is probably "You know... Stuff." but that would be a pretty shoddy blog post on my part. Yes, granted, aside from one yesterday, I last posted in the Bronze Age or something.
However, the "You know... Stuff" answer isn't going to cut it with some of you, so I suppose I should flesh "stuff" out for you a bit more.
In an arse-about-face way of story telling, I will cover the important stuff first - which, as it happens, is the more recent stuff - and then get to the less important stuff, such as me droning on about me.
So, the important stuff: Kellie is a poorly girlie.
As you may recall back in the Bronze Age (or whenever it was) Kellie developed two interesting "issues" The first was a very random and apparently very Cardiac-related issue. Her heart would suddenly speed up (tachycardia) or beat in a wobbly out-of-time way (arrhythmia) and, either way, it made her feel like shit. Her previous GP was very much "Meh" and after much
If you were reading back then, you will remember Kellie became part-cyberman at that point, and had wires and electrical things stuck to her body to record her heart for a few days. Then-local-hospital looked at it, noted that it hadn't recorded everything, and effectively sorted her out with "LOL discharged anyway! Get over it KTHXBB"
So she did her best to get over it, but it sort of became a part of who she was. Er, is... Either way.
The next issue that suddenly became interesting was her Triglycerides. If you recall, a normal person (ie, me) has a triglyceride level of 3.0-4.0, and a HIGH reading is considered to be around 5.5. Kellie, on the other hand, cracked off an impressive 20.8. It was so bad, the GP phoned and told her to get her schexy behind into his office, where he threw medication at her, put her on regular blood tests, and started monitoring her carefully.
The medication was Statins, and it wasn't long after her starting them that her personality changed and shifted and she effectively became a different person. We spoke about it at length many times, and even though her Triglyceride levels were coming down, eventually after much Umming and Arring, she decided to go down an alternative path and try different (NON Statin!) medication.
[I should add, side-note: Seeing what they were doing to Kellie, I researched Statins and with a little help, have found out that they're a pretty shitty drug. MANY people have reported personality shifts and mental changes, and none for the better. Kellie personally lost interest in everything, including family life, arts & crafts and life in general. Within a week of stopping them, she was already on the road back to being Kellie again.
Back to the story...]
However... Even though her numbers never came down to normal, they HAD come down from the 20.8 to about 6 or 7. After changing her meds and having a blood test, the doctor phoned again, and back she had to trot... They had shot back up to 16. Oops. So, she's on different medication for all that now, and hopefully it's doing the job...
And that's not even the worst of everything - there was a reason I mentioned the cardiac stuff... See, last week, Kellie felt a bit rough on Tuesday, and over night Tuesday into Wednesday, she was very poorly. Her heart was running at a million miles an hour (true story), and sometimes it was speeding up, sometimes it was nice and slow, sometimes it was thumping like it was trying to escape. On top of this, she felt - and these are her words, not mine - like her chest was being crushed like someone was sitting on it, plus she had pains in her chest, up the side of her neck, and down her left arm.... I know, right!
At one point, I considered calling an ambulance - THAT'S how iffy it was.
Wednesday morning, she gets up and starts getting ready for work, but ho-ho-no-you-don't luvvie. I call her boss and explain to her what's gone on, and lucky for me, Sue (while a bit unhinged and obsessed with snogging me) is brilliant and very understanding. So, kids are shipped off to school, I call a cab and take her up to A&E (ER for you non-normal sorts) for someone to give her a good kicking.
Triage whips her straight in, take blood, have a poke and a listen (or copping a feel) and took an ECG as well for good measure - plus for comedy gold, he stuck a cannula in her arm too... I knew exactly what he was looking for, and when he said "Cardiac Enzymes" I knew he was looking to see if she had had a heart attack.
So, deciding the last thing someone with a wonky heart needs is to be stressed out is, you know, more stress, I keep that little tid-bit of info from her. Thankfully on Monday, she was given a prescription of GTN which I suspect the doc gave as a "Just In Case" measure - so I had her use that too over night which seemed to ease things a little bit.
From Triage, we were seen fairly quickly by a Doctor who checked her over, went over her history and asked everything he could think of asking. He gave her a very good examination (copped a feel) and decided to get an Xray too.
It was at this point we discovered a new, interesting hospital policy. Women requiring a chest Xray have to be stripped and in a hospital gown. Now, at this point, Kellie is tired and exhausted, pissed off, has been poked, prodded and had her feels copped several times. To have a stroppy, moody, jumped up Xray tech get shirty with her was the final straw. She refused to change in a normal place (Ie, somewhere for lay-dees) and stomped into the nearest mens toilet. When she came out she looked...
Well...
Now, were I capable of running, I would show the world the photo I managed to take of her before she inserted the camera where the sun doesn't shine, but for now, I shall hold on to that image for blackmail purposes.
With her Xray done, and her changed back into normal clothes (changing, this time, in a Disabled Toilet!) the doctor went through her blood results, her Xrays, her ECG and everything else and was very happy to tell us it wasn't a heart attack, but said it really sounded like a nasty arrhythmia. Lucky for us, the GP has already referred her up to Cardiology...
With everything being happy and hunky dory, we were able to go home, where, upon sitting on the sofa, she promptly flaked out, snoring and drooling in her own special way.
Sue called that evening to see how she was, and SE decided Kellie wouldn't be in work, and again, Friday morning when Kellie decided she WOULD be in work, Sue told her in NO uncertain terms that she would NOT be in the office, and she would get in trouble if she did show up.
So she got out of her work clothes, and back into her PJs.
She's still poorly - we couldn't go camping this weekend because of it which pissed us off - but walking up stairs is knackering her out, christ knows what roughing it would do to her. Plus, with it being my birthday, she's been co-ordinating the troops, friends and family around me, and as of 11pm last night, she reached the bottom of her little energy barrel, and has stayed put since. Today, she has mostly been slumming it in joggers and vest top.
Cardiology appointment: 9th November.
And so ends Chapter One of Where The F... Have I Been.
Name: Dan English
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