Just To Cap It All Off

(Otherwise entitled: And You Thought My Family Was Bad)


For some time now, I've been living on rabbit food whilst also putting on weight. OK I haven't exercised much, but you try getting up a head of steam when you can hardly breathe for feeling like an over inflated tyre. (Mothers-in-the-know, we're talking size 8 1/2 months, ok?) Its been a whole new masterclass in dignity in the face of shattered pride, and I rock.

I put a stone on in hospital, living on abstaining from hospital food, and that was in about ten days. I've put another stone on since. My stomach is really delicate now too, with all sorts of antisocial/painful side effects to eating things that used to cause me no trouble; dumb, unrelated stuff like white bread, sesame, or pineapple.

Here's the story:

Went to the Doc some months back.
He said (nice guy): It looks like you are allergic to your beta blockers, but for a year after a heart attack your heart can just decide it didn't like being messed with, and come to a complete halt, which is why you are prescribed them, to stop that happening. So, you can either put up with it, or come off the tablets and die, your choice.

Yup, you gotta love that guy, for his bedside manner if nothing else; he really was that blunt. The fact that I felt like shit was neither here nor there, to him.

So here I am, living on fibre and leaves, unable to even eat a large meal and hold it all down, frequently ripping my throat to shreds on stomach acid; not offered to be signed off for incapacity benefit or anything (because hell, other people cope) and doing what I was told - just hanging on in there and putting up with it. The dodgy antisocial gut means I cant really look for a job; heck I don't even go round a supermarket all on my own any more in case of having to make a run for it with nobody there to hold the trolley. But I'm being good and doing what I was told.

Three weeks ago I get an appointment with the Cardiac nurses back at the hospital - the routine follow-up to check cholesterol levels. They took one look at me and threw themselves into a flutter, exclaiming things like
wrong size
wrong shape
not you
all in front
can't be right on what you're eating
very worrying
pregnant?

I took a preggy test to make sure it wasn't that.
They asked what my GP had to say about all this and I told them.
As I left they said they would be writing to him straight away.

GP responded to them within two days and made out that he was very concerned and would want to see me immediately. I know this because the cardiac nurses rang me to say so and to ask if I'd heard from him yet. For a brief moment, in their eyes, he had exonerated himself and come up looking concerned and misunderstood.

A whole week later I got a letter (straight away, huh?) telling me to make a routine appointment and saying he was sure it was something simple.

A whole other week later (yesterday) I got the earliest possible appointment.

I walked in and he asked me to lie on the couch. He patted my stomach (I'm sure it only seemed cursory), and asked me to sit up again.

Honestly, if I hadn't brought my husband with me as back-up, that would have been my entire contribution to the appointment, the man immediately ignored us both and dictated a letter as we sat there. Specifically he addressed the dietician, stating that I eat too much and need help with setting up a low fat diet. He then turned to me and told me that my sole problem was eating too much.

In the end I managed to come away with another appointment for a scan (which is what the Cardiac Nurses wanted) and another to see the Gastro specialist, but only after we both told him everything I'd told him months before. Not that he wanted to listen.

His parting shot? His piece de resistance (presumably after the 'humiliation' of being told how to do his job)?

He told me the Cardiac Nurses were very worried about me. I guess he doesn't know I'm in contact with them, because he told me (and I quote):

"Of course they are worried about you, because they know you are digging your own grave with your teeth. You have to stop eating so much."

Nice, Dr Jones of Seaford Medical Health Centre; really, really nice. I don't think you listened to a single word I said, or if you did, it seems you dismissed them all as lies or ignorance. Thank fuck you didn't decide to take my blood pressure, eh?