I see my doctor about every six months, but I also see the anti-TNF nurse, about every three months, so you've got that alongside, and then I've blood tests about every four weeks because obviously they need to monitor what's going on. So you, it's not a case of it's a medication where they'll put, you, they put you on it and, and tell you to go home, there is quite a lot of monitoring that you have to do alongside it because it is a quite a powerful, powerful drug so you do have to make a lot of hospital [laughs] visits but, you know, that's part and parcel of, feeling better is that you, you do have to make more hospital visits to, to enable you to, for that medication to run smoothly for you.
Do you know what they are checking with the blood test? What are they looking for?
It's the change in your white blood cells isn't it? [laughs].
They check for your, I don't know what the count is, the rheumatoid factor?
So when, before I was on anti-TNF drugs, I had a rheumatoid factor of about a hundred and twenty and, obviously when you, you've start medication it starts to work that will go down so they can, they can tell by that how, how bad you are feeling 'cause it does reflect I mean in some people it doesn't but it's, in a lot of people it does reflect 'cause I could tell when I was feeling rubbish by looking at my rheumatoid factor [laughs] 'cause it was always very high so, they, they'll look for that and monitor that as well, but they, they ask you as well when you go for going to the hospital they, you know, they check all your joints regularly and see if any are particularly inflamed, and they'll also tell you how you ask you how you are feeling generally as well so that's always monitored.
In which way?
Sort of how, how you're feeling in terms of sort of tiredness or just, just general wellbeing as well.
They'll check all your joints and, and, and see whether they're inflamed but and, they'll ask you about how you're feeling but no other tests no.
If you have any questions or if you need any advice can you ask, can you phone anybody?
Yeah, you can phone the hospital whenever you want. Yeah so, and you can speak to, I can speak to the, the person who I see at the hospital any time I want so.
That's your consultant or your nurse?
The nurse, if I want to I, if I wanted to speak to my doctor I could do as well so, you know, help is there if you, if you need to ask any questions or anything and you can just speak to someone straightaway, so. |
