Gastroenteritis – Back to the UK

The return to the UK was relatively incident free, I took some Imodium and painkillers, so apart from the general dull pain and occasional strong throb, I was OK. There was only one point on the plane when we were coming in to land that I thought I was going to throw up. I ran to the toilet (which was quite close of course) and as soon as I entered a fruity/flowery smell immediately stopped the nausea, just in time for the seat belt sign to come on. For the rest of the flight I just had to smell my girlfriends lip balm to stop the sick sensation. Even the airport trek and drive home was OK, no accidents and I wasn’t feeling that bad. Of course that changed once I was home.

We got home at about 11:30pm, already knowing that I wouldn’t be back at work until at the earliest Wednesday. We began unpacking, checking e-mails, and generally getting sorted. Then while I was using the toilet I suddenly felt very cold and started to shiver. At first my girlfriend thought I was messing around and was getting annoyed at me! Only after I suggested we take my temperature did she change her mind. It read 39.5°C, my highest yet and probably ever. I blame the Imodium from stopping my body from purging the infection (gf blames the cheeseburger I had at the Portuguese airport). So back to bed, lots of bed covers, cold flannel and a sick bucket just in-case. We were both quite worried and decided to phone NHS Direct… We call them, they take details, they call back within 30 minutes. They don’t call back, we call back again when temperature rises to 39.8°C, they take details, they say they’ll call back in another 30 minutes. We eventually spoke to someone who said to take paracetamol and go to hospital if it stays over 40°C. They also said a doctor would call back in a while as well. They suggested that I don’t have a lot of covers over me to reduce the temperature a bit. Not a great help. A doctor did call back and said to go to the doctor if the diarrhea wasn’t better by Tuesday.

You guessed it, Tuesday comes along and its no better, if anything I’m worse, almost going every hour, if not more. By now I’m eating just potatoes, rice, pasta and bread and drinking litres of water with Diaralyte electrolyte drinks to replace lost sugars and salts. That stuff tastes so awful, although it’s drinkable with a bit of blackcurrant concentrate. I go to the doctor, who listens to everything I say and tells me it will be gone in 2 days and to continue what I’m doing. Not very helpful but he sounded quite confident so I was too. That was a mistake. Thursday comes along and I’m no better, the same as before and again off I go to the doctor. This time he is slightly more concerned, only slightly. He said it will be gone by Monday but just in case to have a stool sample taken to see if I have any infection. He said I would be well enough to go to work on Monday. My dad thankfully takes the sample to the hospital that night.

Monday rolls on and I’m the same, still eating bland food, drinking the horrible drink, and visiting the toilet every few hours with abdominal pains. I phone the surgery and ask about my results, the receptionist is rude and tells me to call again in 2 days. Not to be deterred I call again on Tuesday, to which I’m met by the same rude attitude and she tells me to call in another day. After I insist that I was still ill she eventually agreed to call them up, but told me the line was often engaged. Like that matters to me! Most of the time I’m in the surgery the receptionists are gossiping amongst themselves, they’ve got plenty of time to make a phone call. I then found the number for the pathology department at the hospital and made some enquiries myself. I got through first time, no engaged tone, and it turns out that patients can’t find out their own test results, you either have to wait for them to be sent to your surgery or ask your surgery to call the hospital for the results. I was quite annoyed by this but I asked how long a normal stool sample should take to which they told me 3-4 days. This meant Wednesday so again I call up the surgery. This time the receptionist said that she would not call up until at the earliest Thursday. I was gobsmacked. Either she lied to me yesterday or was just trying to fob me off. I tried to argue with her but she’s had years of practice at being rude to people over the phone, plus I was still feeling bad. On Thursday I called up early, asked about my results (nothing new) and booked an appointment to see the doctor, once and for all I wanted some help and assistance. According to the receptionist it was the only appointment with the doctor that day. I thought I was lucky.

I turned up and sat down in the waiting room, not feeling great. This is when the receptionists began talking about me! Well, they began talking about annoying people that keep calling up to get test results, even call the hospital! How rude and impatient these people were. ARGH. I was eventually called to see the doctor, only to be met by a nurse! Now don’t get me wrong, I don’t have anything against nurses, but I had booked to see a doctor, so was just more annoyed at the receptionist. The nurse didn’t seem very helpful, and even told me I should have booked an appointment in the afternoon to see the doctor as the results were more likely to be available then! Was she joking! I was so annoyed I even complained to her about the receptionist. She then wrote a note on my record telling the receptionist to call the hospital for the results and then to call me at home immediately so I could get some medication if needed. So I left that day knowing at least something might happen.

I got a phone call on Friday morning from the receptionist. She had my results (Campylobacter jejuni), and had booked me in to see the doctor that afternoon. For once she didn’t sound rude and seemed to be quite helpful. I go to the doctor that afternoon, go through my life history again and again and he notes that he can’t find my results… More humour from the NHS. It turns out that the results had still not been sent by the hospital to the surgery and the only way we had the results was that the receptionist had phoned up and written down what I had got, I hope she spelled it correctly… The doctor then tells me that diarrhea lasts up to 10 days and that it should be gone by then. The doctor I saw was a bit of a joker but he was being serious! It had already been 14 days and it showed no signs of letting up. In the end I had to ask him if he could give me something for the bacteria to which he was reluctant. I understand if I had a sniffle, or was feeling a bit poorly but I had a proper infection that had caused me diarrhea for 14 days, what more does he want?! I got the anti-biotics shortly after and by the end of the weekend I was almost back to normal and ready for work. Apart from a bit of nausea from the drugs and dizziness from the lack of food, I was mostly better.

One other thing throughout this process, as soon as a UK doctor knew I had been to Portugal, they immediately tried to use this as the cause. It just annoys me that they jump to conclusions about what was wrong with me and just seem to say “leave it 2 days and you’ll be OK”. Even if they tell me that every 2 days they don’t seem to care, by then I’m someone else's problem. I probably could have used a lot less NHS time if I had be dealt with properly in the beginning and not as though I was just pretending to be ill.

Morale of the story? All public health service is crap, that’s why it’s public.

Gastroenteritis – Portugal

I spent this New Year in Portugal with my girlfriend and her family. Its normally great fun and I get to eat a lot of varied food (the Portuguese definitely know how to eat). This year it was a bit different as on the 2nd I started to feel quite ill. Not quite ill, very ill. It was quite late and I had a horrible headache and started to feel generally bad with the occasional urge to go to the toilet. I thought it might be a recurrence of Flu that I had had before Christmas at the time so I asked for the thermometer. We measured it to be 38.8°C and then both my girlfriend and her Mum began to go slightly mental. Before I knew it I was in bed with about 5 or 6 sheets over me, a flannel on my head and 2 very worried women hovering around me with some paracetamol. By the morning I was having more than just the urge to use the toilet, a pain in my abdomen was occurring quite a lot and especially before I needed to use the toilet. This carried on getting worse during most of the 3rd and by the evening we decided that I should see a doctor as my flight was in the morning. We went to a local private hospital as by now is was after 11pm and was seen very quickly by a doctor. He actually touched my abdomen! You’ll realise why this was a surprise as the story unfolds.

He then directed me to the normal hospital with a note as he thought it might be appendicitis. I showed them my passport, they checked it, and sent me on my way without a bill. I then turned up at the hospital and waited, and waited, and waited some more before seeing a nurse. She read the note, gave me and my girlfriend an armband (to be my translator) and sent me back to the waiting area. We waited and waited and was then called through to another waiting room, where we waited some more. My girlfriend was quite rudely told she couldn't go with me until she showed the guard her armband. It wouldn't have taken too much decency to ask her first before being rude, GRR. Hours must have passed by now and my stomach wasn’t getting any better. I then saw another doctor who read the note without examining me, and then sent me off for a urine and blood test and to see a surgeon. The lady who took my blood test looked like she had the bubonic plague and proceeded to be snotty while drawing blood. She seemed even more chaotic than she was ill as she didn’t seem to know who was next and kept popping her head out of the door to see if anyone else was waiting. This is where it gets even more humorous, in hindsight of course. I was called in to see the surgeon who just stood there looking at me. After a pause and a bit of a stupid look, he then read the same note we’d been given by the first doctor. He quite rudely or weirdly got me to lay-down while he prodded me, almost looking annoyed that I was bothering him. I’m not surprised as before he called me in, he was sitting in his room chatting to another doctor for at least 30 minutes. He came to the conclusion that I was OK and sent me on my way to wait around again before I was seen by yet another doctor. She looked over my blood test, not examining me, and then said I must have gastroenteritis and that I would be OK in a couple of days. By this time it was about 5am and in this time I had spoken to my travel insurance company more than the doctors.

The next part of the story is partially my fault as I was stupid not to get an E111 card before I travelled. No problem I thought though as I had travel insurance, and after the experience at the private hospital I thought it would be no problem. How wrong could I be. They wanted to charge me €120 as I didn’t have the E111 card. I called the insurance company and they said no problem, the hospital can fax the bill over and then they will fax back a guarantee to pay it. When I asked the guy behind the counter you would have thought I had asked him to loan me the money, pay for a taxi back and also give him a slap on the face. The answer was no, they couldn’t fax anything and I would have to pay. OK I thought, oh well, I’ll pay by credit card. Wrong! Of course they don’t accept MasterCard, Visa or Amex. So the guy comes with me to a cash machine in the hospital to get the cash, which I do. The machine doesn’t give me a receipt of course, one more thing to go wrong…

We eventually get back to the house at about 6am, not feeling any better but now thoroughly knackered. For anyone that thought the UK health service was crap, I think this was just as bad.

Woolworths

I’m back to updating my blog now although it’s been over 2 months! A lot of stuff is worth mentioning here but I think so I’ll start with Woolworths. It’s quite old news now but at the time it was a bit of a shock. The downturn, or recession as its now known, only really hit home when well known companies started to go bankrupt, namely Woolworths and MFI. We decided to visit our local Woolworths on the first day of the sale, but we only got there at about 7pm as I went after work. I was quite shocked at the state of the shop, the shelves were empty, there were piles of stuff over the floor and there was an atmosphere or desperation in the air as people searched for bargains. The sale wasn’t even that good! Sure, it was 50% off, but only up to 50%, most items were only 20% or 30%, with the best only at 10%, like DVDs and CDs. I think in the end we bought something but it was so uninteresting that I can’t even remember what it was.


The problem with Woolworths was that they sold everything and anything, almost without any limits. Want a hammer, they have it. Want a sewing machine, they have it. Want a DVD, sweets, toaster, children’s toys, clothes, they have them all. Most of the items on sale would only be bought by people who either happened to be walking through the shop, or by people who couldn’t be bothered to go elsewhere. Impulse buys perhaps as well. If I want a DVD or game I go to Amazon, HMV or Game. If I want children’s clothes I go to Primark. Toasters, sewing machines, bedding would all lead me to Argos. Woolworths once mainstays of CDs, sweets and Toys probably kept them alive this long, but they were being out-competed by so many others. Woolworths stores often had huge retail spaces full of slow moving product, they could have probably got away with half the space and saved on rent.

I still think it’s a shame that they have closed as I remember them as I was growing up. In hindsight their business must have been in trouble for quite some time and they probably should have had some help like Marks & Spencer did. Oh well, there will be a lot of new Tesco and Iceland stores sprouting up in their place, good or bad I don’t know