International ME/CFS Day 2007

Not sure what this flower is - bulbs planted in a hurry between showers. Might it be a ranunculus?

Today is International ME/CFS Day. It's also Florence Nightingale's birthday - some people believe she may have had ME. She certainly had some sort of disabling, relapsing and remitting illness. She may have had chronic Brucellosis, as suggested by D A B Young, formerly principal scientist, Wellcome Foundation. Maybe that's another thing that could be checked for in ME/CFS patients.

Was very pleased to see that Dr Crippen included a post from Mary in this week's BritMeds about her recent consultation with her (locum) GP over her DLA renewal application. I have always been looked after both well and kindly by my GPs, but I have heard many stories similar to Mary's.

Dr Crippen also included a link to an article in the Scotsman about the spread of Ticks and Lyme Disease in Scotland. The lady in the article was misdiagnosed with ME, and I wonder how many other ME patients may be misdiagnosed when they really have Lyme.

This time last year we were staying with Sarah in her shared house in London. We demonstrated outside the Department of Health, and I presented documents from the MEACH Trust to 10 Downing Street. We did some gardening too.

This year we have had too much on our plate with Dad's hospitalisation and then discharge into a nursing home to have been able to travel that far - we haven't even made it to the caravan yet.



I like the way the raindrops have spattered the black pollen around the petals.

PS The knitting is going very slowly (and is also very mistakey!). About 1 or 2 rounds a day. But I think (hope!) it's longer than it was the last picture I took. I don't think John will mind the mistakes (he's not a knitter, so probably will think it's supposed to be the way it is), nice soft warm wooly socks, who cares about mistakes.

Tele-medicine

Mothering Sunday flowers from Sarah and Helen



John has been having problems with an abscess in his jaw, I wrote a little about it already.

Response to Metronidazole (400mg) tablets seemed slow, but by the end of the course his jaw felt better. Until Friday, when he had a few twinges. By Sunday he was struggling, we only made it late to the family meal that he cooked for (Sarah and Helen took the beef stew over).

But we did stop by the side of the Mersey en route, wind against tide so plenty of waves with the north-westerly gale.



He rang NHS Direct Sunday morning, who gave him the number for an emergency dentist. But he just said to call his own dentist Monday morning. Fine, but his dentist is only working part time, so isn't there on Mondays. Apparently John has bone loss from his jaw, and the abscess isn't on a tooth, but between the gum and jaw. There seems to be a history of osteoporosis in his family, so come Monday morning he decided to try and get a doctor's appointment.

8.30am saw him dialling the surgery, over and over. When he finally got through he was asked for name, address, dob and telephone number. He was asked if it was an ongoing problem, or something new, and when he responded that it was a new problem he was told that a doctor would ring back later to triage him.

Meanwhile he was doing hot salt water rinses, and that seemed to be helping. The Doctor called about an hour later, and John told his story. The Doctor suggested he should see a Maxillary consultant at Aintree, which apparently is the Regional Centre of Excellence, to have the bone loss checked out, and he will write for an appointment. At that point he asked if John wanted more antibiotics.

John explained that the jaw wasn't painful at that time, and the hot salt water treatment seemed to be working. He'd had a good night's sleep after a couple of bad nights, so he thought he'd leave it for now. The doctor encouraged him to call back later if he felt worse, and said he would write a prescription if he needed it later. At this point John was still talking about going back to work in the afternoon.

After that John fell asleep again (most unlike him to sleep in the daytime) and slept till lunch time. By which time his jaw was looking rather inflamed (at least what I could see of it through his beard!). So he called back the surgery, to be told to phone again at 2.30pm.

2.30pm and it's back to redialling until he gets through - the surgery doesn't accept ring-back. Finally gets through, to be told he'll phoned back and triaged again. This time he gets a nurse he thinks. Explains his story again, remembering this time to mention that he has been visiting my father regularly in hospital, and that he (my father) has a resistant organism (we don't know what) in his lungs. The Nurse said she was confident that John's problem was nothing to do with my father's problem.

Nurse says she will have a word with the doctor he spoke to this morning. His prescription will be ready at 4.30pm, but if the doctor needs to see him he'll telephone.

John then went back to sleep, waking a bit before 4pm to get dressed and head for the Health Centre. He didn't see the doctor, but a prescription for Augmentin 625 mg tablets was waiting for him in reception. I must admit I find it strange to be "seen" by one of our GPs over the telephone!

John slept all night last night I think, and has slept most of today too, just waking to get some breakfast and lunch (and finish reading Balthazar). I think this is the first time he has been off sick since he started in his current job, which is just over 4 years ago.

On a completely unrelated topic, they came and renewed the white lines on our road yesterday. They did the lines across our side road in the morning, but the one down the middle of the road was after the rush hour, so it was beginning to get dark. The photos I took through our dirty windows haven't come out very well, but I thought it would be fun to put them up anyway.



At least you can see the flame to keep the paint (or whatever it is) hot and liquid shows up in the picture below. The guy has a handle on the handlebars (for want of a better description) that he uses to cut off the paint when the unpainted bits of line come up. Urk, I'm not very good at describing this!



I also finally managed to do the quiz What Operating System Are You? Thanks to Sisyphus again for alerting me to this!







And I thought I'd finish this with a short video of the River Mersey I shot on Sunday. It's a bit shaky as I shot it from the car, which was being buffeted hard by the wind.