Angina good news

[bludnut]

Hi everyone, You may have read my posts about being diagnosed with angina last October while we were on a cruise round the med. I spent over 3 hours being treated and given the final angina diagnosis by the medical team on the ship. Back home I took a letter from the ship's doctor to our GP, after reading it and discussing my future treatment, I was asked if I would like to take part in an Angina Management Programme. I asked her what that entailed and was told that it was provided by the NHS locally by a Heart Surgeon.There would be discussions about what angina was, how it affects my body and how to live with it. I took her advice and off I went to my first meeting.That lasted two hours and I was shown a model of a heart and then the female heart surgeon drew pictures of how angina is caused by cholestrol narrowing our arteries,and how blood travels around our bodies. I was also told that adrenalin isn't good for me, but endorphins are. It was fascinating listening to her and hearing her explain and simplify everything such that I could understand it. Well the good news is that after attending monthly meetings along with my wife, I have now been signed off for twelve months. She is satisfied that my angina is under control, and that I am trying to get fitter by getting upstairs as fast as I can. This fastish exercise hasn't caused me any pain at all, which is surprising because I would normally, and still do at times get pain just by walking a short distance. We were told that our programme is only one of four in the UK, so if such a programme can help people cope with this problem, why aren't there more of them?

bludnut

[Wingnutty]

At the Broadgreen Heart and Chest Hospital in Liverpool, they have a department called the Liverpool Refractory Angina Centre (LRAC). I think this is one of the centres you referred to. I heard about a year ago that it had a fantastic reputation and tried approaching my GP about being referred to it. After a lot of trouble getting an appointment with my GP, I wrote them a letter which they couldn't ignore and got a face to face meeting and was told that he has no access to the centre as it doesn't appear on a list of departments that he can refer to. He did agree to refer me to general Cardiology and he said I could ask to be referred to the centre once I had a meeting with the cardiologist. I was given a booking reference and told to book online. This was in April. When I tried to book online with the reference, it told me there were no appointments available. After exploring every bit of the online booking form, I found in a corner, an instruction which said that if there are no appointments available, you can leave a message for them to get in touch with you, but you must give them 2 months before getting in touch via a phone number, if you don't hear anything from them.

Needless to say, they didn't get in touch, so I phoned the number sometime in June and was told that they could see my name on the system but it would probably be September before I was seen. In late July, I received a letter telling me that if I still wanted the appointment to fill in a lot of online forms and that I would be seen on August 25th. I then got an e-mail asking me to confirm that I wanted the appointment which I replied to, and last week got a text asking me to confirm that I was coming for the appointment. Then on Monday the 21st August I got a phone call from Broadgreen telling me that my appointment was postponed because of a consultants strike this Thursday and Friday and they would be in touch in due course to arrange another appointment.

Bear in mind that this is just to get to general cardiology, not LRAC. When I eventually get an appointment, I will then have to ask to be referred to LRAC with yet another delay. I feel like I am cycling uphill and the NHS keeps throwing spokes in my wheels. Anyway, I am glad you had a good experience Bludnut. Hopefully, so will I when I eventually get there.

My symptoms are similar to yours by the way.

[bludnut in reply to Wingnutty]

Hi, I am sorry to read about your experience, it was so easy for me. My GP refered me and within a very short time I was given a date to attend my first consultation. There are two women heart surgeons who run the programme, and both of them interact with patients very comfortablely. I have to say that it was a interesting programme and it has made coping with angina a lot easier.

bludnut