Pneumonia Follow Up, Chest X-Ray and Results (Part 6)

I returned back from my trip abroad and the pneumonia recovery continued. Routine follow up following pneumonia includes a 6 week appointment for a chest x-ray, after treatment completion. My chest x-ray was booked for a few days after I got back and it was a very quick and easy appointment. I arrived 10 minutes before my appointment time and ended up being seen and back to the car within 30 minutes. It was great because I didn't even need to pay for parking! 

The radiographer was lovely and the hardest part was that my hair was so long. If you have long hair, I would recommend bringing an extra bobble to tie up your hair and put it a bun for the picture. Apparently the hair can affect how the image looks. I managed to wedge it in one position, which she then very quickly ran to take the image before it fell back down. 

She couldn't tell me anything about the results, but said that the image looked good quality. I was quite surprised by how long it took me to get the results. I was waiting for a phone call and didn't get one. It wasn't until almost 4 weeks later, I got a letter in the post from my supposed consultant, who said that it was normal and no evidence of pneumonia or scarring, therefore I was discharged from the respiratory team. This was a huge relieve because at one point they were talking about potential lung cancer. 

As a side note, I took 3 pictures in the hospital having my chest x-ray and for some reason they've all got the edges cut off, with these weird grey boxes. This is the least severely affected picture! Any ideas what happened?

I've also had so many blood tests and doctor / nurse appointments at the GP since. The hospital requested I have my immunoglobulins checked after 6 weeks to ensure I wasn't immunocompromised. Apparently the laboratory only checks this once every 6 months, so the blood sample was rejected, but my previous results from the hospital were abnormal so I'm not sure if the GP will ask for these to be repeated again. 

I've continued to suffer with increased voiding urgency and mild incontinence, as well as diarrhoea, so I've had multiple urine and stool samples examined. The urine grew E. Coli on a couple of occasions. One of which I did have UTI symptoms with, but the other no usual UTI symptoms. The stool samples were checked for infections and for coeliac but both were clear, and luckily, that situation has now much improved. 

As I'm still completely run down, tired and quite out of breath, I've had a number of other blood tests sine with FBC, U+Es, LFTs, CRP and TFTs. My CRP is still quite raised, but the other's are normal so they think at this point it's likely long Covid. I honestly feel like I've been constantly poorly since June and I hate it. I have like one or two days where I feel a little better, and then if I do some activity, I feel so bad again the next day. I'm not sure when I'll eventually feel better again, but I'm really hoping next year is a better year.