To your health 💕

I was going to write about my day in a layby when my car broke down, it was a very boring, yet eventful and interesting day, I might get round to writing it up at some point! But another event has taken over and created a whole new perspective for me and my family. I feel it’s important to write about it and raise a little bit of awareness.

The other Tuesday, Youngest decided she didn’t want to get up and go to school. It wasn’t our finest morning when it came to parenting, I’ll admit. Hubby was complaining of a headache, and I was suffering a ‘hangover’ from a migraine the day before.

Youngest really pressed the wrong buttons and we ended up in a war of words and shouting and yelling. Hubby was getting stressed, so took the dog for a loo break (the dog went, not the hubby). That kind of diffused the situation and when hubby returned, peace had been restored.

Hubby felt the headache was upgrading to a migraine, took a preventative tablet and headed to bed, while walked the girls up to school. I came back home, had a drink, and decided to join hubby in a nice lie-down. As I climbed in beside him, he woke and declared he needed the loo. I settled down and waited for him to come back.

It seemed to be taking an age, but I was dozing and told myself it was just my imagination. He eventually came back into the room, but there was definitely something wrong. He was struggling to catch his breath, not in an ‘I’ve been running’ sort of way, more a ‘somethings choking me’ way. He said he felt lightheaded and dizzy. It was very peculiar.

I convinced him to call 111 and speak to someone, just to put his mind at rest. But that’s not what happened.

We’ve both got experience of working in an NHS environment and we know the protocol. When the call handler said the ambulance could take up to an hour, we were relieved. We got dressed and went downstairs to wait. I decide to go to the local shop and get extra facemasks and try to get aspirin, as recommended by the call hander. I was gone a few minutes at most.

When I got back, hubby was on the phone as a nurse had called him back, they upgraded the ambulance to an eight-minute eta. We were both worried at this point.

As the ambulance pulled up, I secured Oz in the kitchen, he thought it was a great game, but why couldn’t he meet the new people?????

The usual checks (blood pressure, temperature, oxygen saturation etc.,) and an ECG were done, very competently by the student paramedic, but nothing was amiss (well his blood pressure was high, but he has white coat syndrome). As he was still having trouble breathing, they decided to take him in in ‘just in case’.

I’m glad they did.

On arrival (or so I’m told) they took bloods, which were also fine and repeated the observations of his vital functions, which remained fine. A while later, they reran the bloods. This time his blood clotting factor had risen from 5 to 20. Apparently, this is a bad thing, indicating that there might be an issue. It’s still in the ‘normal’ range, but a rise is BAD NEWS. The third test returned a score of 39. This was, apparently VERY BAD NEWS.

A plan had been made; he was spending the night hooked up to monitoring machines on the heart unit.

By this point, I need to collect the girls from school, I hadn’t told the school anything yet, as I was convinced it was nothing and I didn’t want to worry the girls unnecessarily. Now I had to face them and tell them.

They took it reasonably well and were placated by a trip to the corner shop on the way home. Youngest had some concerns about her tea and packed lunch, as she’d never seen me prep either of these and she likes her food a certain way, so I let her help me in the kitchen, which she was very happy about.

We were able to FaceTime with hubby which relieved a lot of nerves and concerns, and we all went to bed together.

The next day went swimmingly well, I felt like a proper adult, I walked the dog, did the shopping, all the usual household chores. Hubby had a diagnosis and a treatment plan, he’d had some immediate treatments, but now they were able to treat him properly. He had a blood clot on the lung. This is properly called a pulmonary embolism and, left untreated, 1 in 3 dies from them. Properly treated, its less than 1 in 10.

So, you can understand how important it is to get prompt help!

Now, the scary bit about this story is that since April(ish) last year, hubby had been experiencing pain in his leg. The pain had gradually become worse to the point where he visited his GP. They used the Wells scoring system to determine that he was not at risk of dep vein thrombosis and referred him to a physiotherapist for muscular pain instead.

As you can see, even if the scoring system determines you are unlikely to be at risk, a blood test and further investigations are recommended. The GP in hubbys case decided against this course of action, thanks to pressure on the NHS due to the pandemic.

We have been incredibly lucky that we were able to access medical help quickly and efficiently. He was treated well and, although he will be on various treatments for quite some time, he is recovering quickly. His other organs have not been affected by his condition. We are very lucky.

And this Christmas, I will hold my babies and my loved ones even tighter than usual. I will not worry about the Sprouts and Assorted Vegetables, and I will avoid the nervous breakdown.

I promise to:

Be present

Wrap someone in a hug

Send Love

Donate Food

Be the light

Merry Christmas to you and yours,

Lots of love,

Lentilweaver xxxx