Posts Tagged ‘NHS’

Blood clots kill more people each year than cancer and HIV/AIDS combined.  I therefore find it amazing that in the UK there is almost zero publicity relating to the issue, especially given that we have a freely available health service (NHS) whose job it is to attend to the nation’s health and that treatment and prevention of them is so simple and straightforward.

blood clot diagram, embolism

Image courtesy of Wikipedia.com

Perhaps reading this assertion over the severity of the effects of blood clots you think I exaggerate.  Maybe you are more familiar with reading about strokes (a blood clot in the brain), or heart attacks (many of which are caused by blood clots in the arteries supplying blood to the heart).  The type of blood clot I suffered, a Pulmonary Embolism (PE), is fatal in roughly one third of cases yet is easily preventable.

Indeed it is a fact that almost all blood clots are easily preventable and the costs of prevention far outweigh the price of curing the after effects of having one, assuming you survive that is.

Preventative drugs, such as Heparin and Warfarin, are relatively cheap when compared to many newer drugs, yet are frequently not employed, at least in the UK.  If you are diagnosed with a clot, or at high risk of one, I would encourage you contact your GP and attempt to ensure that you are not passed over for what is a simple and cheap preventative measure.  Doing so could save your life.

Some people believe that blood clots only happen to the elderly and to some extent that belief is justified however it is not the whole story.  There are a number of risk factors that can increase your risk of having a blood clot, but even if you have none of these risk factors one may still occur – as happened in my own case.

Only yesterday a Premiership footballer, Bolton’s Gary Cahill, was diagnosed with a blood clot.  You don’t get much younger or fitter than this.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/football/teams/b/bolton_wanderers/8503800.stm

So now that I have shown you that anyone can get a blood clot, that they are serious enough to be life threatening and hopefully you are motivated enough to care…now what?

Well, if you get a pain in a limb accompanied by swelling hopefully you will take it more seriously than I did – only going to the doctor after three days of being unable to walk due to what I thought was merely a bad cramp or muscle pull in my calf muscle.  An early trip to the doctor could save your life, or at the least help you avoid a lot of pain and inconvenience.

Another thing you should do is consider visiting:

http://www.stoptheclot.org/

It is a great site for expanding knowledge of this subject and exploding a few myths.

Stay healthy.

Best wishes as ever.

Dave Felton.

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1
Feb

A bad case of man flu…

   Posted by: Dave    in Medical

What to say?  So long since my last post.

Admittedly when I started this blog I had some reservations.  I am basically a private person and find it hard to believe that anyone would be interested in my personal experiences and opinions etc.  At the same time, as a writer, any exposure that enables me to become better known is a good thing and a blog is a reasonable method of self advertisement.

While I was dithering, trying to reconcile these two opposing attitudes, I had a Pulmonary Embolism (P.E.) and was admitted to hospital.  This admission let to some complications and so, several weeks after the initial event I find myself still recovering.  I hope that a 20+” embolism in my leg, a PE along with several varieties of pneumonia can be accepted as a good reason for not posting more!

(Apparently not posting regularly is a major sin in the blogging community, but as a blogging newbie I hope to be forgiven…)

It is my hope that in the future I will be able to post about the events surrounding my hospitalisation, but I cannot at present for legal reasons.  Suffice it to say that my impression of the National Health Service has changed radically. I am suing the local hospital in an effort to get chief executives to change policy within the hospital and thereby hope to save a few lives, having nearly lost my own due to a stupid bureaucratic situation. Wish me luck.

Watch this space as they say, but certainly don’t hold your breath as legal cases tend to take quite some time in my experience and I cannot see a malpractice suit being any faster.

One thing that has changed due to all this turmoil in my life is my attitude to blogging.  Previously my intention was to keep this blog tightly focussed around writing. This idea comes from the “web guru’s” that tell you to “keep your posts focussed” etc.  Well, I am a human being and clearly life has some interesting plans in store for me – what better material than to share this stuff and in so doing hopefully help others in similar situations?

Another aspect that I think I will now include to a greater degree is my personal interest in things political. Some aspects of modern government leave me cold. A wiser man than I once said “All that is necessary for evil to prosper is for good men to do nothing”.  I don’t intend to do nothing.

The reason of course to avoid politics is obvious; it causes division. A writer is trying to sell his work and so annoying half your audience is seen as a bad thing. My counter to this at the present time is: Yes, but the topics I intend to broach are humanitarian ones – if broaching these topics sends the heartless away, so be it.

Maybe my current attitude is due to looking at my own mortality over the last few months, or maybe it is just the medication! (Yes, I am still medicated as the pneumonia has still not cleared) Whatever the truth of the matter the world seems in need of some more straight talking instead of endless “spin” – maybe I am just stupid enough to speak it…

Best wishes as ever.

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