May 2014 - quick update

Not really much going on right now - I've been preparing a blog post to mark the anniversary of my operation...thinking back on all that has happened. I am around 2 weeks away from the anniversary of my diagnosis and under 3 weeks away from the anniversary of my operation. It seems incredible how fast time has flown by.

The only update really is on my cramp. Ever since the operation I have suffered with cramp in my calf, toes, fingers and jaw. I never suffered cramp before, so clearly something in my body has been out of balance. That has changed recently though, with the increased dose of Testosterone. At least that is what I am assuming, because it is the only thing that has changed. When I had my last blood tests my Testo levels were still low so the dose was upped slightly and has been upped again slightly. On the second increase the cramp seems to have stopped. Only time will tell as to whether it stays away.

Other than that a quick rant about our 111 service (out of hours doctors telephone number). We phoned the service on behalf of my dad, nothing too urgent but on balance it was something worrying me enough to contact them. Initially everything went well, a clinician rang dad and she thought it was worthwhile getting a doctor to ring dad. Unfortunately dad wasn't as communicative with the doctor as he was with the clinician. So we had a confused doctor leave us a message on our answerphone asking to call him back via the 111 service. So we duly rang the 111 service quoting the reference number the doctor had given. We got the follow reply from the contact centre operative:

"oh sorry, when you rang this morning you spoke to a different 111 call centre and we haven't got access to the same computer system as them so we can get access to details about the call. You will have to give us all the details again".

What the heck!! So go through it all again we did, different clinician and doctor ring dad again and come to the conclusion he was probably fine. But how on earth can you run a national service like that and not be able to share call details between centres. Madness.

Rant over.... :-)