More than just a bag lady

When I was an inpatient recently I asked about getting the Covid vaccine because I’m classed as Clinically Extremely Vulnerable (ECV). Apparently other patients on the ward had gotten theirs but I was told that it wouldn’t be possible and that I would have to get in touch with my GP. Apparently staff within the hospital had been using the system to book vaccinations for friends and family by saying that they were an inpatient and as a result they were now only vaccinating staff who could show their ID badge.  I can understand that people are worried about the people that they love but to think that people abused the system in that way makes my blood boil.  So when I was discharged I rang the GP surgery and was told that they had absolutely nothing to do with the vaccination programme and that I would need to get in touch with NHS England. So I called NHS England and spoke to an adviser who told me that according to the system I wasn’t eligible for a vaccination. I explain...

Following on from my last blog post I ended up spending a week in hospital before my Hickman line was fixed. I had to have a second blood transfusion cause the first one only raised my haemoglobin from 70 to 76g/l and it needed to get above 80g/l. So on the Sunday the second bag of blood was given and I hit 86g/l which meant that I could be added to Monday’s list to get me line repaired (or replaced if it couldn’t be fixed).  But when the doctors did their ward round they told me that there were staff shortages in Interventional Radiology (IR) (which is the department that deals with fixing or inserting new lines) and that they would have to see if they could do it the next day. Turns out that they couldn’t do it on Tuesday either so I was really starting to feel fed up about being stuck in hospital when I technically wasn’t unwell. But I did get on Wednesday’s list and thankfully they were able to repair it which turned out to be literally a 5 minute job. I was so pleased that the...

A lot has happened this week and unfortunately I’m writing this blog post from a hospital bed. I know- I can hardly believe that I’m back in again. This is my 5th admission in as many months and Ward F22 at QMC hospital is starting to feel like a second home! So what happened this week and why am I in hospital?  On Wednesday I had a flexible sigmoidoscopy which is basically a lot like a colonoscopy but without going quite so far into the bowels. This was the first one I had in Nottingham and they do things a little differently to St Marks. I did have the exact same procedure done at St Marks a few days before Christmas last year but there were some problems meaning that they couldn’t see what they needed to. Firstly because I was in so much pain with my bowels they couldn’t give me the enema needed to wash out my J-pouch and small bowel and then they couldn’t cannulate me which meant I couldn’t be sedated. Because of the pain they could only get the scope in a few centimetres and c...