Mortgage free by 2021?!

hiddenshadow

£95.81 extra to the offset pot between bank interest and surveys.

Neuro appointment scheduled for the first week in February. Can't say I'm surprised, but waiting another 8 weeks for results is not appealing. May impact our move, as well, if the appointment results in something along the lines of "we still don't know what it is, please go get more tests". Still have (faint) hope that the letter itself will contain more information, but I think the only definitive info I've seen in medical letters is "all your tests came back normal, you're fine", and clearly I'm not, so even if it said that it wouldn't be much help.

Argh.

lippy1923

Boo to the long wait. Can you go private? Feb is too long to wait for results! Or any chance you can have a consultation over the phone with a doctor?
Phone them up and kick off. When I had this horrible wait for my son, they wanted me to wait ages as well. 1 phone call telling them "hell no" and I got booked in much sooner.

hiddenshadow

Thanks lippy. I can go private, but would have to wrestle my test results out of the gp/neurologist first, which would take 3-5 weeks (+ extra for xmas, I'm sure). I'll wait for the letter to arrive in case it says anything noteworthy and then start that process, I suppose, though if it does take closer to 5 weeks then it's not far off just waiting for the regular appointment.

lippy1923

I think its still worth calling and kicking up a fuss. You might find a "surprise cancellation" pop up which is a lot closer than 8 weeks.

Watty1

I'm with Lippy1923. Please call and say you are barely able to work, are receiving a lot of stress from your employer and surely they have left this too long now .....

debtfreeoneday

Hope you get that wait time reduced, that seems so long

hiddenshadow

Thanks, all. Got the letter from the neurologist, which thankfully does provide test results, but those results aren't overly helpful (confirms the symptoms I have, not why I have them). I've been referred for another test next Saturday (lovely way to spend a weekend...)

Will probably phone up on Monday and see if I can possibly get seen in January. I'm assuming that the results from next weekend's test won't be complete before January anyway, but if I could see the neurologist earlier, or be put on a cancellation list, that would be handy.

lippy1923

Fingers crossed there is a cancellation and you get results as early as possible.

hiddenshadow

In MSE news...

Not sure if I mentioned our heating didn't work when we got it serviced last month. British Gas guy found a leak in our flue and promptly shut off all the gas to the heating system and threw up his hands in horror. Cue a couple of weeks of me phoning anyone and everyone who'd ever heard of our heating system. One place (who we'd had quote for a new system last year) quoted £1,200 to replace the entire flue. Got another place to come out and do a quote and the guy just did the repair...shocked me a bit (as he didn't say "by the way, I'm going to start work now that will cost more money", but then at the end he said it would be...drumroll please....£90 + VAT. :money: Took another month for the bill to arrive in the post with payment details, but that's done and dusted today.

Car is finally sorted. Took £1,600, but it runs well (knock on wood). Hoping it continues to do so for another year so we can rebuild the repair/maintenance savings pots.

Ended up unexpectedly putting £500 more into an ISA. We used an app called Revolut for managing foreign spending (it acts like a virtual debit card across currencies, but also gives you a physical debit card that you can use to spend and withdraw cash; all transactions use the bank's exchange rate without fees so that's handy. Anyway, they're doing a promotion where signing up for an ISA account with a partner company and depositing £500 into it gets you £50 in your Revolut account. So that was a no-brainer. Did involve some hassle though as my referral to the ISA account didn't go through so had to chase that up with support a bit, but got there in the end.

In life news...

MIL is coming down next weekend to spend Christmas with us, which will be nice.

I phoned up hospital appointments and got my neuro moved up to January 19. :j Apparently they don't operate a cancellations list, they just assume people will keep phoning to request earlier appointments. Glad it worked for me, anyway. Hopefully test results will be in by then, with 5 (4, counting Christmas) weeks you'd think it would be done.

Essentially haven't worked for 2 months now. On the one hand I feel bad, on the other hand if work would just let me do things from home I could have at least managed part-time levels of work the past two months, so it's really on them. They didn't follow my instructions re: requesting info from my doctors, so are now re-doing it the way I told them to originally. :doh: Apparently they are hoping to get "adequate, independent and professional evidence to support any of the recommendations you would seek us to act on", which...good luck with that. I don't know how the GP or neurologist are meant to make any recommendations (as they don't know the full extent/frequency of my symptoms), let alone support them with adequate/independent/professional evidence (surely "hey, I got that medical degree!" would suffice?!). Anyway, that's...happening.

Applied for an interesting-sounding job via the recruiter who was involved in my last job hunt (albeit for two roles that I didn't get or want). Everything sounds promising, pending a second in-person interview post-Christmas to meet the rest of the team. In theory, salary would stay the same but I would be able to work remotely up to 100% of the time, so that would be great re: health and re: moving to Ireland. Cautiously optimistic about that.

debtfreeoneday

Glad the date got moved and fingers crossed re the job.