http://strokefoundation.com.au/what-is-a-stroke/types-of-stroke/transient-ischaemic-attack-tia/
I was 35 years old, working in Salford, Manchester as a Health Visitor and a Midwife. I was fit, very slim at 60Kg and I'm 172cm (5 ft 8 in). I went to my local gym 4 times a week and had been a gym junkie for 4 years. I was so proud of my health and my body. I ate healthy food and I was a non smoker. Alcohol was a weekend thing and not excessive.
This was my house in Monton, Manchester.
Off I toddled to my GP. Over the space of a week it was like my arm was freezing and defrosting. It started with my left hand. It was numb but still usable and this lasted 2-3 days. This was followed by the sensation reaching my elbow again for a few days and finally it arrived at my shoulder! So my whole arm from fingertip to shoulder was affected.
My hand and arm were pale and slightly mottled but I do have Reynauds.
http://www.medicinenet.com/raynauds_phenomenon/article.htm
Oh I was worried. When you're a nurse you know too much. Way too much.
I was on the oral contraceptive pill and had been married a few years.
My GP checked me over and decided it wasn't a stroke or a TIA but had no idea what it was. He wrote me a referral for a neurologist at the hospital.
After a week it resolved spontaneously.
I decided to stop the OC Pill. With my family history I knew it was a risk factor that i didn't need.
Ironically the appointment for the good old NHS outpatient neurologist was for a week after I'd left England. I was doing a big trip around the world on my way to migrating to OZ.
We'd planned on travelling across Canada,
USA,
Mexico,
Cuba,
New Zealand
and then arriving in Sydney, Australia.
With what I know now, this was vasculitis. It has happened again, just before I was diagnosed with Lupus. It was one of the first signs that something was wrong.
At the time you think you're going mad. It doesn't make sense. You wonder if you're imagining it. You're not.
http://www.rheumatology.org/Practice/Clinical/Patients/Diseases_And_Conditions/Vasculitis/
The next time it happened it affected many other parts of my body. Again it was my arm. Then a week or so later it was the left side of my face. I only realised this as i was applying make up to my face before a home visit to a client. I noticed that one side of my face felt weird. I pinched my eyelid on both sides of my face. The left felt different to the right. I hardly noticed the pinch.
Again it lasted a few days to a week.
Then I was walking down Brunswick Street in Fitzroy, Melbourne with a friend and my left leg went 'funny'. It felt sort of numb, sort of dead yet I could walk. My friend had noticed that my face had gone pale at the same time. She drove me straight home. It resolved within a few hours.
I went to see my GP. He told me he thought it was either Lupus or MS. I refused to believe it was either! I wasn't as sick as my friend Janet and that's how I saw Lupus. I saw it as a disease where you were nearly dying. I was tired but I wasn't that bad. He gave me a referral.
He told me if it happened again i needed to go straight to Emergency at the nearest hospital. It did happen again and I got my husband to take me to St Vincents' Hospital in Melbourne. I was checked over by a Dr and he said I had 'GOK'.
In all innocence I replied, 'GOK?'
'Yes', he said "God Only Knows'.
In other words he had no idea. It was so baffling that he wasn't interested and I'm sure he thought I was making it up. Just great. I felt really stupid.
If we as patients feel not believed, not listened to, we are terrified of going to see a Dr with yet more crazy symptoms.
I was grateful that my GP DID BELIEVE ME.
I'm sure you Lupies can relate to this story. When it starts off (SLE) the things that are happening to your body are so weird. Its hard to make sense of it yourself. This is typical before diagnosis. You start to think its all in your mind. I recall going to see another GP as i felt so ill and needed another opinion. She told me to get some more sleep. It was probably viral and basically to get over it. I wasn't listened to. This GP was a private (not bulk billing GP) and had come recommended to me and worked in a more affluent area of Melbourne. I felt stupid again.
Once I found a GP that did believe me and take my symptoms seriously I'd done a lot of harm to my body. This GP bulk billed me and worked in a poorer area of the city. Over 90% of lupus patients aged 30-45 are women. How convenient to label us as neurotic. After all that has happened to women since the dark ages. It made me wary that they were seeing me as mentally ill. I wasn't.
And remember i'm a nurse and midwife and i felt like this. For someone without a knowledge of disease and the medical profession how scary is it? Very.
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