Google induced paranoia, bruised muscles and medical records
Originally published at orodor.org.uk. Please leave any comments there.
Shortly after writing my last post about coming off my bike I lost my senses and decided it would be a good idea to google my symptoms. This lead to me eventually reading about collapsed lungs, pneumonia and all sorts of other nastiness.
I fail at going to see the doctor, to the point that there were already three other matters I’d been putting off going to see about when I introduced the google induced paranoia. It turns out that I have nothing to worry about anyway, and that I was quite lucky in only receiving a bruised muscle from the crash. Sadly it will take up to ten weeks to heal, which pretty much rules out any heavy lifting and potentially cycling too. I’m keen to re-introduce the cycling as soon as possible, but there’s no point in even considering it when the muscle is bring on pain induced spasms, they’re quite powerful and could easily knock me off making things worse.
Whilst at the doctors I decided it would be good to follow up on my plan to learn more about my Cerebral Palsy, as I mentioned in my recent upcoming posts post. It was a bit disappointing really, I always remember seeing the three inch thick folder of notes when I used to go to the surgery more regularly. These days though all the records have been condensed and shifted on to the computer so the only information I could see was that I was diagnosed with hemiparesis at birth and shortly after that had a series of fits.
Hemiparesis is weakness on one side of the body. It is less severe than hemiplegia - the total paralysis of the arm, leg, and trunk on one side of the body. Thus, the patient can move the impaired side of his body, but with reduced muscular strength. - Wikipedia
There was no record of me being re-diagnosed with Hemiplegia, but it must have happened at some point. The doctor was a locum and wasn’t overly familar with the surgery so couldn’t tell me too much about accessing my text records as it appears all surgeries have different systems. However, the advice received was to write a letter to the surgery asking if it was possible and how much it would cost. There is some generic information available on the NHS site too. I think I’ll send off a letter later in the week, it apparently takes roughly 21 days to get a reply so the wait shouldn’t be too long.