squiddie
Getting fit for 30!
Welcome to part six of the adventure. Catch up here;
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
Here's a summary of the story so far. In June 2009 I started having a bit of blurry vision in my left eye, like when you wake up and need to rub your eye, but rubbing it didn't help! So I went back and forth to the hospital pretty much every 2 weeks until December. During which I had a bloods done, a chest x-ray, a head CT scan, a trip to a specialist rhumatologist. My eye problem isn't connected to my knee problem, I don't have sarcoidosis and seemed a pretty much random thing. So after 6 months of all this jazz I was discharged and had to go back in 4 months.
All was well after the steroids and so on, and life went on. Then at the start of March it started again, so after week of ringing a number that no one would answer last Thursday (18th March) I rang a different number and managed to speak to a human! She said I was due to come back about nowish but she could get me in until the 20th April or I could ring the triage nurse so I did that and she said I could either go in to the emergency clinic in Cheltenham that afternoon or Gloucester tomorrow morning, and as I live in Gloucester and it was Gold Cup week I opted for Gloucester!!
So I get there and I see this dude who I wasn't a great fan of said it was a flare up of the same thing and gave me dilation drops, steroids and a cream - yes a cream... for my eyeball! And said to come back as an emergency the next day.
So I went in Friday morning - the short version is I was there 5 hours and got a parking ticket in the process! Half an hour of the first waiting room and I got my stats done and sent through to the second waiting room. After about half an hour of waiting in there I realised I hadn't put my blue badge up so sent my Mum to put it up, but I already had a ticket on the window. (I appealed the ticket, but they said it's your own fault for being stupid so pay up! I'm appealing again - but that's another story.)
After about 2 hours I got in to see the Doctor. They didn't have my notes so I suggested they found them and there are a lot of notes! He went and found them, according to my Mum (my spy on the 'outside') she heard a nurse say they were in a cupboard! He um'ed and ah'ed for a while and got another Dr. who happened to be my specialist. He had a look and they had a chat in medical mumbo jumbo and they decided they were going to take a sample of my eye! Which is weird! I went into another room and just as the nurse was about to put the drops in the doctor appeared and said to put one drop in and to follow him, so I was waiting for the drops to take effect, about 3 1/2 hours had passed at this point, so I wondered up to the nurse towards the door and said "please can I go for a wee?!" So I wobbled off to the toilet and sent a text to my friend saying it's all kicking off!
So I saw another Dr. who had a look and my specialist had another look and he decided not to take a sample but send me for a test called a Fluorescein Angiography next week.
This brings us to Wednesday (24th March) they dilate your eyes and place a cannula then put some saline in to make sure it's working the add one dye, take some photo's add some more saline and then another dye and take more photographs. Now if you've ever had a light in your eye it's natural to squint. Now imagine having dilated pupils with very bright multi-coloured light shinning directly in them, the doctor said - open your eyes wider please! What a silly billy. I got them to show me the pictures on their screen which was pretty cool, wasn't like a x-ray, MRI or CT scan images I've ever seen. As I'm doing a computer science degree it was fascinating to me! Anyway they went and got the head of the department to have a look and she showed me a photo of the back of my eyes where the vessels are which looks like fork lightening, and many were leaking, which looked like thicker, brighter fork lightening. She said she'd talk it over with my specialist and call me in a day or two and guess what - I've not heard yet!
Thank you all for your concern it means so much to me. I know I haven't been around much lately, but as you can see I've had a lot going on. I'm also seeing a rheumatologist who had found elevated levels of serum ACE and something else in my blood so thinks I might have general arthritis which is worsening, I'm also seeing a neurologist as I've got guyon canal syndrome! And my pain specialist who I've been seeing since I was 12, and believed in me when everyone else thought I was a teenager trying to get attention, has left! So it's all kicking off, plus with my eye I can't look at a computer screen for very long (which is a bit of a pain for a computer science student!!). I've not been sticking to plan so find it hypocritical to come on here and give advice when I can't stick to it myself. I'm starting again from today, I've reset my tickers and am ready to move on, a lot of people, including many on this forum, have it worse than me and I've just got to get over everything and get a grip.
Thank you all, love, hugs and good vibes to you all,
Natt xxx
part one
part two
part three
part four
part five
Here's a summary of the story so far. In June 2009 I started having a bit of blurry vision in my left eye, like when you wake up and need to rub your eye, but rubbing it didn't help! So I went back and forth to the hospital pretty much every 2 weeks until December. During which I had a bloods done, a chest x-ray, a head CT scan, a trip to a specialist rhumatologist. My eye problem isn't connected to my knee problem, I don't have sarcoidosis and seemed a pretty much random thing. So after 6 months of all this jazz I was discharged and had to go back in 4 months.
All was well after the steroids and so on, and life went on. Then at the start of March it started again, so after week of ringing a number that no one would answer last Thursday (18th March) I rang a different number and managed to speak to a human! She said I was due to come back about nowish but she could get me in until the 20th April or I could ring the triage nurse so I did that and she said I could either go in to the emergency clinic in Cheltenham that afternoon or Gloucester tomorrow morning, and as I live in Gloucester and it was Gold Cup week I opted for Gloucester!!
So I get there and I see this dude who I wasn't a great fan of said it was a flare up of the same thing and gave me dilation drops, steroids and a cream - yes a cream... for my eyeball! And said to come back as an emergency the next day.
So I went in Friday morning - the short version is I was there 5 hours and got a parking ticket in the process! Half an hour of the first waiting room and I got my stats done and sent through to the second waiting room. After about half an hour of waiting in there I realised I hadn't put my blue badge up so sent my Mum to put it up, but I already had a ticket on the window. (I appealed the ticket, but they said it's your own fault for being stupid so pay up! I'm appealing again - but that's another story.)
After about 2 hours I got in to see the Doctor. They didn't have my notes so I suggested they found them and there are a lot of notes! He went and found them, according to my Mum (my spy on the 'outside') she heard a nurse say they were in a cupboard! He um'ed and ah'ed for a while and got another Dr. who happened to be my specialist. He had a look and they had a chat in medical mumbo jumbo and they decided they were going to take a sample of my eye! Which is weird! I went into another room and just as the nurse was about to put the drops in the doctor appeared and said to put one drop in and to follow him, so I was waiting for the drops to take effect, about 3 1/2 hours had passed at this point, so I wondered up to the nurse towards the door and said "please can I go for a wee?!" So I wobbled off to the toilet and sent a text to my friend saying it's all kicking off!
So I saw another Dr. who had a look and my specialist had another look and he decided not to take a sample but send me for a test called a Fluorescein Angiography next week.
This brings us to Wednesday (24th March) they dilate your eyes and place a cannula then put some saline in to make sure it's working the add one dye, take some photo's add some more saline and then another dye and take more photographs. Now if you've ever had a light in your eye it's natural to squint. Now imagine having dilated pupils with very bright multi-coloured light shinning directly in them, the doctor said - open your eyes wider please! What a silly billy. I got them to show me the pictures on their screen which was pretty cool, wasn't like a x-ray, MRI or CT scan images I've ever seen. As I'm doing a computer science degree it was fascinating to me! Anyway they went and got the head of the department to have a look and she showed me a photo of the back of my eyes where the vessels are which looks like fork lightening, and many were leaking, which looked like thicker, brighter fork lightening. She said she'd talk it over with my specialist and call me in a day or two and guess what - I've not heard yet!
Thank you all for your concern it means so much to me. I know I haven't been around much lately, but as you can see I've had a lot going on. I'm also seeing a rheumatologist who had found elevated levels of serum ACE and something else in my blood so thinks I might have general arthritis which is worsening, I'm also seeing a neurologist as I've got guyon canal syndrome! And my pain specialist who I've been seeing since I was 12, and believed in me when everyone else thought I was a teenager trying to get attention, has left! So it's all kicking off, plus with my eye I can't look at a computer screen for very long (which is a bit of a pain for a computer science student!!). I've not been sticking to plan so find it hypocritical to come on here and give advice when I can't stick to it myself. I'm starting again from today, I've reset my tickers and am ready to move on, a lot of people, including many on this forum, have it worse than me and I've just got to get over everything and get a grip.
Thank you all, love, hugs and good vibes to you all,
Natt xxx
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