A day to forget.

Today was a day that Dot wouldn’t want to repeat very often. She suffers from Trigeminal Neuralgia, which if you don’t know what this is look it up on Google and it will scare the pants off you. Well it has been in remission for the past 3 years but over the last few months has been rearing it’s ugly head again and finally yesterday gave her hell all day and half the night.

Only one thing for it but to call an ambulance this morning as she had been unable to eat or drink for 36 hours. We were whisked off to Stafford hospital which has been receiving a lot of bad press lately. We found the A&E staff very helpful and despite a sign indicating a 2 hour wait we were in the system being processed within an hour. This medical condition is a rare one and not many in the medical profession are aware of it but low and behold the Eastern European doctor who attended Dot knew exactly what it was. He soon had Dot stabilised with a strong pain killer injection and a saline drip as she was dehydrated.

After a few tests to preclude any possible misdiagnosis we were given a prescription and letter of referral to our own doctor and were on our way back to the boat within 4 hours. Pretty good for the NHS.

Back at the boat it was nice to meet up with Mike and Denise on Nb Densie who we cruised with in the London area and have crossed path’s several times over the last couple of years.

Hopefully Dot will get a good night’s sleep on her new stronger tablets and be bright eyed and bushy tailed in the morning. Apparently the tablets supplied back in 2005 in NZ were much stronger than the prescription she received in the UK in 2007 hence the fact they had become ineffective.