Earlier in the year - June, I think it was - I suffered a bout of severe indigestion culminating in my being violently sick and ringing 111 for advice (it was a weekend). The person on the phone was really nice and was going to do me a prescription for some Omeprazole (they're a sort of anti-acid reflux capsules. As luck would have it, I had some left over from when Carol used to take them regularly and they were still in date. The out-of-hours people sent a report through to my GP telling him what had happened and we didn't think much more about it.
Until Saturday a fortnight ago, when I had a repetition, very considerably worse than the first one. This time I had a severe pain in the stomach and back and I couldn't sit or lie down comfortably: I couldn't even sit long enough to hold on on the phone waiting for someone from 111 to answer. I tried three times before giving up. I somehow must've managed to doze off as when I woke up it was Sunday morning and the back pain had thankfully gone. I made it down to the walk-in centre on the Monday and got a fresh supply of the capsules and a bottle of Gaviscon. I'd never had it before but apart from being a little on the sickly side it's quite palatable - and effective, which is the main thing. A doctor there felt around and pronounced my stomach to be feeling a bit tender and advised me to get some blood tests done.
Fast forward to the end of that week, when I got the results back. Apparently I have abnormal levels of alkaline phosphatase and bilirubin, which are indicative of trouble with my liver and/or gall bladder. I remember my mother having to have gallstones removed: she kept a little pot of them on the mantelpiece until we persuaded her that they weren't quite the thing to display to visitors. I never have, though. Despite my usual tendency to adopt a 'if it ain't broke don't fix it' approach to medical treatment, an occasional bout of indigestion I can cope with, but this was something else again and I'm keen to avoid a possible recurrence. I've got a second round of blood tests booked to have done on Wednesday (the Doc didn't really explain what these might show up that the first ones didn't) and then a liver scan to be arranged. We should then know more, hopefully.
I'm a little jittery in case it turns out to be something really serious, but on the other hand at the moment I have no way of knowing and so fearing the worst isn't a particularly productive line to follow. I'm just glad it happened when it did, so I no longer have Carol to consider, although I miss having no-one to talk to about it. The waiting and not knowing is always the worst part of something like this: your mind wanders and conjures up all sorts of grim outcomes which probably/hopefully won't happen.
