GPs, Bureaucracy, and A&E

Interesting day. As predicted my GP visit was utterly pointless. It was a locum this time and not only did he not know what primary sclerosing cholangitis was, but he couldn't really get a grip of encephalopathy either. Now considering that I'd been sent there to get checked to see if I was becoming encephelopathic as a result of my PSC this was clearly a problem. Eventually the GP proudly pronounced me to be jaundiced and that I should 'be seen'. I left with with the phone number for the transplant coordinators as he clearly didn't have a clue, and left.

I went to work for a few hours and got a bit deluged by people needing my help with things. Its nice to be wanted but it was a bit much given my current state.

Later on I rang King's transplant cooordinators myself who agreed that my GP had been as useful (and I quote) "as a chocolate teapot". They told me that if my symptoms were getting worse I should head to my local A&E. I did suggest twice that it would be easy for me to head to Kings A&E, but they quite sternly told me to go to my local hospital as otherwise their A&E people tended to get stroppy. Seemed insane to me given they have all my notes there, but what can you do...

So I left work and went up to the Royal Free A&E. They were very good and having arrived at 4pm I was in an A&E bed by 4:30 with my blood taken already. By 5:00 the doctor had discussed my condition at some length, and had done a few checks to see if I had encephelopathy (e.g. looking for tremors in my hand: 'liver flap', and seeing if I could draw a 5-pointed star to check for confusion). Both were fine, and so I just sat and waited for the blood test results to come back. My brother joined me at about 5:45 which was great, and by 6:30 the results were back and showed no particular great change in my LFTs, so they discharged me and gave me the blood results to take with me to Kings.

So all in all, inconclusive. I still know that my concentration is worse than before, and I'm more fatigued, but according to the blood tests there's been no great change, so nothing to write home about. Certainly won't make any difference in terms of waiting lists and so on, so I've just got to hope - in the nicest possible way - for people to get donating organs and get my transplant list moving again.