Below Par

I've definitely not been firing on all cylinders lately and feel very tired a lot of the time. A lot of it can be attributed to two things....

First, I don't sleep brilliantly. I haven't for decades, but it seems to be getting worse. My daughter, Kay, did not sleep through the night until she was 8 years old. My sleep pattern was therefore severely disrupted to the point that in the end my General Practitioner prescribed amitriptyline to help me sleep. It is an all-singing, all-dancing drug that has a variety of uses from preventing bed-wetting, helping with depression and, in my case, taking at night to aid sleep. I have been on a very mild dose (5mg) for the last 27 years and until the last few years it helped to keep me asleep without the after-effects of more conventional sleeping tablets that might prevent me from driving or going about my usual daily routines. However, in the last few years, I have had to increase that dose to 10mg. That is still small-fry compared with the 150mg daily limit I could increase it to, but I find I am still surfacing four or five times in the night (every 60 to 90 minutes) and consequently by morning, I feel exhausted.

The second reason has no doubt been the recent succession of heatwaves we have had in London. With temperatures peaking to 35C over many days, my house has been like a furnace.  I have a flat roof,  huge windows and my bedroom faces West, which means that by bedtime (even once I have been able to draw back the curtains and open the windows once the sun has gone down), the thermometer in my bedroom has registered 32C at midnight! That has made sleeping virtually impossible and on a couple of occasions, I even slept in the kitchen/diner a couple of nights with the patio doors open! I was so hot and bothered, I would not have cared if a burglar had walked in. Now the temperatures have dropped to a more acceptable 25C, I still feel I could do with some more oomph. I've even suspended my gym membership for the whole of July and August to give me time to recover and use my time on other things that needed doing.

However, in recent months, I have been experiencing palpitations in the night, usually on waking - even if that is in the middle of the night - and so my daughter urged me to see my GP. He arranged for me to have a 24-hour ECG and also  some blood tests to see if it was a thyroid malfunction or anything else. I am still on the waiting list for the ECG - a ten-week wait apparently - but had the blood test last week.  I think the phlebotomist was Dracula's sister, as I have had the most impressive bruising on my arm for the last ten days - going through a range of  colours - first red, then brown, purple, green and yellow. As I hadn't heard back from the GP, I looked up the results online, as now seems to be the norm, to discover one of the tests is below the range it should be. The GP had marked it with concern and has indicated he wants me to make an appointment to see him. In panic, I immediately texted my on-call medic daughter (who is on holiday) and her interpretation is that I may be low in iron. All other results seem fine. So that might explain why I have been feeling a bit weary. I still have to have the 24-hour ECG, so will wait to see the GP after that has been done. Fingers crossed, whatever it is can be easily remedied.