31st May 2012 – Visiting the GP – double wammy .. or triple?

Went to doctors on 31st and gave her the letter. She didn't know what FreePSA or Free Total meant , she was only a young gP, but she was great. I told her what Dr Google said and she agreed. She then asked to do a DRE - she said the hospital expected here to do this. Lots of people bitch about this, but hey, it’s a normal thing for a guy once you start getting older, have had it done on Bupa health checks and its been ok.  Bit different here with a lady doctor but a doctor is a doctor so I respect that. Didn't mind so I assumed the position on the couch and it was over in a minute. She said I was normal. That gave me a sense of relief. She said she would refer me to the hospital and they would be in touch.

So one wammy was the DRE, second wammy was the referral to hospital, but the third … As a guy who avoids going to the doctors as I am always working away from home, I never worried about heart or other problems. Previous Bupa health checks had said my heart rate was slightly elevated but I had ignored these. So my surprise here was this young doctor took my BP and wasn’t happy. ( to cut a long story short on this one – she put me on a weeks monitoring as a result of which I am now on blood pressure tablets as we cant get the rate down any other way at the moment ) – so that was the third wammy.