Health Check

I usually try to get a fairly regular health check every couple of years with my GP, just to keep an eye on things (and with particular awareness of the family history with a whole horde of fun conditions)  However, what with Covid, lockdowns and life in general, it hadn’t happened since 2018.  I was just about due for the 2020 one when all hell broke loose, and my GP refused to do anything except urgent on-the-day appointments which I try to not take up (none of what I’m doing is urgent, and there’s plenty of people with more urgent concerns than me getting a bloody health check!)

So anyway, when I moved I registered with a new GP, got a message a couple of weeks ago that I was due for a health check, and booked it in.

That day was today. And I’m pleased to say that it all went well.  They took bloods for further analysis (nothing to worry about, all part of the process) but the highlights so far are :

• Blood pressure of 140/70. Absolutely fine and within NHS acceptable levels.
• Pulse – about 70. Not ideal, but nowhere near awful.
• BMI / Weight – too high, but that’s nothing unusual. They’re both absolutely normal for me, so I’m not going to worry too much. As always, I’d like to lose some, but nothing so far has really worked, so 2023 is going to involve some other stuff.
• Cardiovascular Risk – so far (and this one is also connected with those blood tests, so it may change) my results indicate I’m at something like a 5% risk of having a heart attack in the next decade.

I’m also booked to get further blood taken in a couple of weeks in order for proper checks of some of those family-history points.

I’ll also get a call in a couple of weeks to go over the results properly, but for now I’m happy with these data points, and happy to have been able to get it all done again with a bare minimum of hassle and inconvenience.