The First Inkling

I live in Kent, and commute to London daily for work. Because my journey into and out of work takes some two and a half hours each way on the train it's always a good plan to have a pee before leaving the office. The trains do have toilets of course but sod's law says on the day you need the loo, the train toilets will be out of order. (The state of South Eastern trains and services is another subject entirely so let's not go there!)

So, its just before 7pm, after a day in the office, and I pop into the loo before leaving. Had the usual pee and thought it looked a bit dark but thought no more of it. Journey was the usual boring clatter to the East Kent Coast, and arrived home at 9.30 as normal. The wife (you'll get to know more about her later) was getting my dinner ready, and I went to the toilet.

The light in our bathroom is much brighter than the loos at work, and as i looked down, all I could see was blood: not dark but bright red nothing but blood! "Oh shit" I thought.

Came out the loo and called the wife: "you'd better have a look at this"

"Not good" was her summing up. I agreed.

Now, GP's these days work under the auspices of a special kind of Hippocratic Oath which means they are only able to offer care between the hours of 9 to 5, Monday to Friday. Outside of these hours patients are left to their own devices, so it was a call to NHS Direct, and a telephone consultation, resulting in a visit to our GP's locum service who happen to have a 24 hour office at the local hospital, The Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital (QEQM) in Margate. That was pretty inconclusive as the standard course of action for blood in urine is treat it as a urinary infection, and give antibiotics, which is what happened this evening.

So that was that for the evening: its then time to visit the GP nwxt day and follow up, but his initial conclusion is the same; continue with the antibiotics and we will see from there in a week.

At the same time as all this I am also having an issue with my right shoulder, and the doc has referred me to a specialist team to look at that, and while it's important I note that here, the arm issue will become more clear as we move forward. The expert assessment is its a rotator cuff injury of the shoulder.

So that was the first inkling that anything was wrong: I hadn't had any blood in my urine before, not had any bladder or abdominal pain, so up until then, no cause for alarm or panic.

And so it began.