Almost a year to the day I am back in medical shit. I get up to have a bath to ease my foot and calf and to make me sanitary enough to go to the emergency care centre at the local leisure centre. My partner drives me to the centre where I am seen by a chirpy para medic. He prods my leg, asks me questions, he takes my temperature and blood pressure. He does this emergency care service to keep his hand in as he mostly spends his time teaching physiology. That was comforting. Any way the crunch comes when he presses my foot and it makes a dent that does not spring back, Fuck, pitted edema! That’s not good. When I ask, lets call him Jon, whether I could get pitted edema without a Deep Vein Thrombosis he tells me its unlikely. We discus next moves. He makes a call and makes an appointment for me at the Leicester Royal Infirmary at 8 o’clock on Monday morning. He tells us that the unit will take a blood sample and test for an elevated D dimer level. They may also do an ultra sound scan of the calf. He suggests we take reading material as we will have to wait for the blood tests to come back. We know that game only too well. I ask about flying and the likelihood of being able to go on holiday to Spain on Tuesday. He notes that the DVT would not be affected by altitude but it will need medication which comes as an injection form, a dosage of three self-injections that I might be allowed to do myself. My partner’s immediate response is that the holiday is not possible, the medic is more cautious and says the medics try to be helpful if they can. It’s a balancing judgement but one to be made soon as possible as at the very least there is a taxi to cancel and a holiday company to inform within the small print. The para medic prints out my letter for the hospital appointment tomorrow and we leave with me knowing I have no temperature but a blood pressure measure that is elevated.

We drive home, I’m hungry, I expect we both are. My eldest daughter cooks us scrambled eggs for breakfast. I set myself in front of the TV and wrap my offending calf in a heating blanket in order to keep it warm enough to dilate my veins and keep my blood flowing, it also keeps my leg elevated, which is a good thing. Mr Amazon delivers some ankle supports and calf supports that I ordered yesterday. 

So I am sitting on my sofa, leg wrapped and elevated and that is how I will be as I watch the rugby this afternoon and probably for much of the day quietly seething and being unsociable. I find it impossible to be nice about this, which is not reasonable but it feels like a real kick in the bollocks having made such an effort to get myself able to even think about going on holiday. Now it is a moment by moment, step by step situation where any final decision will come at some time tomorrow in the guts of a hospital. Until then I shall “keep calf and carry on”.