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Today was the day I popped along to the clinic at Kings Mill Hospital to see Mr Tim Moorbey (My consultant) who, after checking on my blood results, doing a weight check and a physical examination, informed me that my CLL is currently behaving itself (yeaahhh!). August 15th 2011 marks 5 years since my diagnosis.
Just wanted to share that bit of good news with you :-)
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Showing posts with label blood tests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label blood tests. Show all posts
Tuesday, 7 June 2011
Tuesday, 9 June 2009
Had an appointment with my new consultant today!
Yes, today was my fist "official" consultation with Mr Tim Moorby today.I say "official" as i have already met Tim a few months ago, and spoke to him recently when my blood results decided to go on a world tour for 4 months!. Suffice to say,Tim (or should i call him "Mr"as he is a consultant?) ,Anyway,Tim is indeed a very nice fella who told me more about my condition,possible outcomes and predicted treatments in our first 25 min consultation than I managed to get from my previous consultant(s) in the last 3 years!.
The good news is that the CLL appears to be behaving itself for now, with no major change in my white blood cell counts,no enlargement of my spleen or liver, and my Lymph Nodes are not giving me any bother either. Combined with the results of last years blood tests, it seems that (for now!) it is business as usual....hooraahhh :-)
The good news is that the CLL appears to be behaving itself for now, with no major change in my white blood cell counts,no enlargement of my spleen or liver, and my Lymph Nodes are not giving me any bother either. Combined with the results of last years blood tests, it seems that (for now!) it is business as usual....hooraahhh :-)
Tuesday, 7 April 2009
The mystery of the missing blood test...latest update !
After almost four months i am still not really any closer to finding out the results of my last blood test which was taken at the hospital that i work at in December 2008, however at least i now know why my GP's surgery did not receive them !.It appears that there is a surgery called "Mill View Surgery" in Mansfield, and so...yes you guessed it...my results were sent to that surgery and not Mill View surgery in Sleaford!. Oh well, at this rate my next blood test will probably be being processed before i get the results of the one from 2008!.
Tuesday, 3 March 2009
6 monthly blood test confusion...or is it just me ?
Ok, enough posts that are simply links to other websites or current news articles, this time I have a concern that i would like to discuss with you relating to my 6 monthly blood tests.
Going back to 2006 (no, i am not Dr Who !) when I was first diagnosed with CLL (Chronic Leukaemia), i was asked to attend Grantham hospital every 4 months so that i could have a blood test and then have a chat to my consultant about the results of said test.
Almost immediately I found that "my consultant" was never actually at the hospital when i had an appointment, and sadly when the lady left some 2 years later i had not had the chance to even meet her to say hello !.
The next issue is that after my tests (which i had done at Grantham hospital) were moved onto a 6 monthly footing (i was asked if i wanted to stop having them completely, but declined the offer....how i love needles !) i found that having the blood taken at a different venue (my GP's surgery or the hospital that i work at during the week) seemed to be something that caused a severe breakdown of the "system", when A) it took ages to get the results, and B) If i did not ask for the results, no one ever took the initiative and called with them. The most recent example of this was when, during a period of feeling "wiped out" just before Christmas, i visited my GP and was advised to go and get my (then due) blood test done.The surgery could not get the bloods taken there as they were busy until the 29th December, and as i was due to return to work at the hospital on the same day, i arranged to have the bloods taken at King's Mill (to save me having to miss half a day by having it done at the surgery). The sample was taken in the morning at around 9.30 am, and i remember asking if the results would be passed on to me via my GP to which the answer was in the affirmative.......yes ! :-).
This seemed like a logical answer as the surgery address was on the sample request form......but apparently this was not so !. I also asked if the surgery would contact me if there was a problem that needed to be addressed, and again the lady advised me that she would expect this to be the case, which again seemed to be the expected procedure.How wrong can you be ?
Fast forward to today, 3rd March 2009 and I am at the GP's again, this time due to a chest infection. Before leaving i enquire as to the results of the test on the 29th (i explained that i had assumed up until this point that"No news is good news", yet again...wrong!).
My GP then explains that they do not have any results on record. "Who did the tests ?" i was asked , "The hospital that i work in in Nottinghamshire" i replied. "Ah, well then we will have to request them to send us the results via fax then" she continues and promptly writes down the surgeries fax number for me to pass on to the hospital.
Quarter of an hour later i am on to phone to the hospital explaining the situation to one of the staff members of the Phlebotomy dept, but when i ask her to fax the results to my GP i am told that it is against hospital policy to fax results, and instead i will need to get the GP to phone them and speak to them in person to find out the results.
After the chat with the hospital i then call the surgery again and pass on this information to the receptionist asking if she can get the doctor to do this.
Now i work for the health service, and believe it to be an excellent service, but i can't help but feel that somewhere along the way things have got a little "over complicated", and that it appears that the process of communicating results to patients (i.e me !) seems to be lacking any sort of structure.
So, is it just me, or have other people had similar experiences in regard to finding out the results of their blood tests ?
By the way, all through my consultations with my "consultants" (about 3 different ones so far!), never have they really sat me down and explained what all of the markers that are highlighted in my test results mean....so i assume that it's going to be a case of "go away and we will see you in 6 more months" if everything is "behaving itself", or "We need to put you on medication" if its not. Having been on other leukaemia forums on the net, it strikes me that many sufferers (most notably in the US) appear to have a much greater understanding of their illness, because someone has bothered to explain it to them in great detail.......then again it appears that as is common with a lot of hospital patients in the UK...they are the one of the last people to know anything.......but good for sorting out result requests !
Going back to 2006 (no, i am not Dr Who !) when I was first diagnosed with CLL (Chronic Leukaemia), i was asked to attend Grantham hospital every 4 months so that i could have a blood test and then have a chat to my consultant about the results of said test.
Almost immediately I found that "my consultant" was never actually at the hospital when i had an appointment, and sadly when the lady left some 2 years later i had not had the chance to even meet her to say hello !.
The next issue is that after my tests (which i had done at Grantham hospital) were moved onto a 6 monthly footing (i was asked if i wanted to stop having them completely, but declined the offer....how i love needles !) i found that having the blood taken at a different venue (my GP's surgery or the hospital that i work at during the week) seemed to be something that caused a severe breakdown of the "system", when A) it took ages to get the results, and B) If i did not ask for the results, no one ever took the initiative and called with them. The most recent example of this was when, during a period of feeling "wiped out" just before Christmas, i visited my GP and was advised to go and get my (then due) blood test done.The surgery could not get the bloods taken there as they were busy until the 29th December, and as i was due to return to work at the hospital on the same day, i arranged to have the bloods taken at King's Mill (to save me having to miss half a day by having it done at the surgery). The sample was taken in the morning at around 9.30 am, and i remember asking if the results would be passed on to me via my GP to which the answer was in the affirmative.......yes ! :-).
This seemed like a logical answer as the surgery address was on the sample request form......but apparently this was not so !. I also asked if the surgery would contact me if there was a problem that needed to be addressed, and again the lady advised me that she would expect this to be the case, which again seemed to be the expected procedure.How wrong can you be ?
Fast forward to today, 3rd March 2009 and I am at the GP's again, this time due to a chest infection. Before leaving i enquire as to the results of the test on the 29th (i explained that i had assumed up until this point that"No news is good news", yet again...wrong!).
My GP then explains that they do not have any results on record. "Who did the tests ?" i was asked , "The hospital that i work in in Nottinghamshire" i replied. "Ah, well then we will have to request them to send us the results via fax then" she continues and promptly writes down the surgeries fax number for me to pass on to the hospital.
Quarter of an hour later i am on to phone to the hospital explaining the situation to one of the staff members of the Phlebotomy dept, but when i ask her to fax the results to my GP i am told that it is against hospital policy to fax results, and instead i will need to get the GP to phone them and speak to them in person to find out the results.
After the chat with the hospital i then call the surgery again and pass on this information to the receptionist asking if she can get the doctor to do this.
Now i work for the health service, and believe it to be an excellent service, but i can't help but feel that somewhere along the way things have got a little "over complicated", and that it appears that the process of communicating results to patients (i.e me !) seems to be lacking any sort of structure.
So, is it just me, or have other people had similar experiences in regard to finding out the results of their blood tests ?
By the way, all through my consultations with my "consultants" (about 3 different ones so far!), never have they really sat me down and explained what all of the markers that are highlighted in my test results mean....so i assume that it's going to be a case of "go away and we will see you in 6 more months" if everything is "behaving itself", or "We need to put you on medication" if its not. Having been on other leukaemia forums on the net, it strikes me that many sufferers (most notably in the US) appear to have a much greater understanding of their illness, because someone has bothered to explain it to them in great detail.......then again it appears that as is common with a lot of hospital patients in the UK...they are the one of the last people to know anything.......but good for sorting out result requests !
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