Sclerotherapy

 You might recall that back in August last year I wrote about how I'd managed to get my digitised medical records from a hospital in England to give to a specialist in Australia.

Well, I don't normally post highly personal material, but I had a couple of nice emails hoping everything turned out well, so here's the second part of the story.

I took my printed copies of my English records along to my vascular specialist here in Victoria, and they were mildly impressed that I'd been able to get them out of the NHS, as it gave them a point of departure.

The good news was that I didn't need surgery (yay!) and that the problem could probably be resolved by sclerotherapy.

Inevitably there was a wait time of a few months, and I ended up having the treatment a few days ago. The procedure only took about forty minutes, I didn't even need a local anaesthetic, and I was able to walk afterwards.

I felt a little odd and wobbly afterwards and I had J drive me home, and I spent the afternoon after my treatment with my leg up lying on the couch.

However, it's amazing how quickly you recover, and I'm now hobbling around with a compression stocking on one leg which, combined with shorts probably makes me look more peculiar than usual.

My leg felt a bit painful for the first day or two, and I must have peed about 93 times the day of the treatment as my body got rid of surplus material.

With the compression stocking on it feels almost normal, but it does tend to ache after an hour or so in the mornings when I don't have it on, but instead am wandering around making tea, feeding cats and having a shower - all the morning activities - lying flat reading the news on my tablet it's fine.

Bottom line, if you have a problem like mine, and your specialist suggests sclerotherapy as an alternative to surgery, go for it.

It's not the most pleasant experience, but it's a lot less invasive than surgery ...