I'm not just nuts!

I'm feeling quite jubilant today. The reason? I've remembered something.

The thing that really got to me at this medical was I went away with the feeling that the doctor thought I had no physical reason to justify the pain I feel. It was all in my mind. I suppose that impression has been festering away at the back of my mind.

Last night we watched a recording of the first of the new "Sherlock" series on BBC1. Regardless of the romp of the story, one of the things was the suggestion that Dr Watson's limp, & consequent need for a stick, was psychosomatic. Sure enough, as the programme went on, he was able to forget his stick & run over vast areas of London, up & down stairs. That would seem to indeed be psychosomatic.

Is this the case with me? I can occasionally keep going for a while on my legs, especially if I am distracted eg in the garden. Certainly over the years I've struggled with GPs who can't see anything wrong, not even on X-rays. So is it just imagined? The doctor at this medical asked if the "mild" depression was the result of, or the precursor to, the physical problems. Presumably he wondered if for some reason I maybe have a self-image in which I am handicapped, in an emotional pain that is causing me to project that pain on to my physical self. I've asked myself this before now, & ended up with the conclusion whether it is real or imagined, to me it is every bit as real, as painful, as if it has a physical cause & brings all the resultant difficulties, so it doesn't really matter. What is more, if such medical men are right in their beliefs I clearly need psychological help to effect a cure which none have suggested.

However, this morning I woke up remembering three incidents. The first was the first time I saw a specialist at the hospital. He observed me as I walked into the consulting room. He then told me what I was feeling & he was correct. He reckoned it was one of the worst cases of the condition he had ever seen & put me at the top of his non-emergency list for operations.

The second incident was a few years later. By this time my first specialist had retired so I was with a new, younger man. I think he wasn't entirely convinced I was as bad as I'd said. All that changed when he operated. I'd told him my knees got badly inflamed. When he operated they flared up, so much so they'd almost been too hot for him to handle. From then on he became a far more sympathetic doctor.

The next incident I remembered was when I privately paid for a consultation & report from another eminent surgeon in the field. (At the time I needed some medical evidence to support my then struggle to get DLA.) By this time, I'd become a part-time wheelchair user. After his examination, he was amazed I could walk at all. Most patients with knees as bad as mine gave up long before.

In all these cases, the specialists, all leading men in their field who gave international lectures on the subject, reacted spontaneously without my putting any pressure on. For them to have done so in this way suggests to me there is a real cause for the pain. I cannot believe, under anaesthetic, I could have projected that heat with just a nutty mind. With that I feel I can hold my head up high once more. It's the less qualified doctors stupidity & ignorance, not my assertions. I'm not just making a fuss about nothing. I'm not just some sort of nutty fraud.