"Bureaucracy has a serious impact on health."

A couple of weeks ago I began to aspirate a potion of my food into my lungs and contacted my GP. She was not at all happy and felt that I had an infection and prescribed a courses of strong antibiotics, filling this prescription proved challenging as I had to try 4 different pharmacies before I had some success. This was very important as the infection really hit me over the weekend and I came close to contracting pneumonia but fortunately the antibiotics got in there first.

The aspirating into my lungs is undoubtedly down to my throat cancer which I am not being treated for but a PEG would seem to be the most logical response to this issue as the more I aspirate the more dangerous to my health and life it becomes. But this is where NHS Lothians bureaucracy rears its ugly head. My GP had really been exemplary in the time she has spent trying to arrange this but it seems that the gastroenterology department need notification from my head and neck oncologist who happens to be on a nice long holiday until sometime in August, and then I will need to wait on an appointment all the while trying to keep a serious lung infection from having a very serious impact on my health.

I will be seeing the Speech and Language people soon so hopefully they can get around the bureaucratic nonsense.