My whole experience has been revealing. The Stroke Consultant is totally on the ball, and I really don't know how him and the team deal with all that every day. The shifts are 12 hours, 07.30 to 19.30, and all I saw are totally committed. They deal with strokes from the causal end, and so everything gets checked. This is the very opposite of my friend with atrial fibrillations, where the GP gives him beta blockers, a 24 hour heart monitor, then a wait list of at least six months. So they look at the symptom but not the risks.
It just made me realise how important it is to get checked over. We've had a blood pressure monitor at home for years, not because we have high pressure, but because we have low blood pressure and of course I get migraines, now and then.
Ironically the week after my hospital stay, my GP called me in for a check, not because of that, because they don't routinely communicate, but because I hadn't been in for eleven years. Of course, since this episode, letter have flown from the hospital to the GP, and I'm now in the crosshairs. When I submitted a request for a prescription, now in line, I added a note that the Consultant had changed my meds, and would send a letter. The next day I had a phone call from the GP surgery, making sure that I had enough new pills to last until the letter came through. That was impressive. My GP surgery has bad reviews and is not well regarded and yet I have not experienced that, except that one GP who "didn't feel qualified" to OK me for driving, even though he admitted I was perfectly fit to do so. The nurse who visited me to test my congnisance sorted that out in 24 hours and I do hope he had his arse kicked.
