Persevere

WE had bad news yesterday, a friend has been diagnosed with a brain tumour. She’s to have an operation as soon as possible.

This is a lady who’s never had a day off work in her life. In the summer she went on a week’s Med cruise. When she came back she found her sense of balance was off & she tended to feel nauseous. She saw the doctor. He fobbed her off with a diagnosis that it was a temporary blip due to her recent air flight home. Give it time & she would be fine again. She’s in her 60s after all, you can expect such things to happen.

As she didn’t improve, she persevered with the doctor. He threatened her with having to go to the hospital. She took him up on the offer & is now relieved to have a diagnosis that makes sense to her even though it’s a bad one.

I’m reminded of the problems I had when I first started to have knee problems. I’m quite convinced the doctor thought it was all in my mind, a minor sprain at most that a bit of rest & gentle exercise would cure.

I’m no more given to undue to complaining than our friend. You know when there is something more serious with you. It took me years before I convinced the doctor I should go to the hospital & see a specialist. When he did, he commented it was one of the worst cases of the problem he’d ever seen & instantly put me on a waiting list for my first set of operations.

I sometimes think so many people turn up at surgeries with nothing much amiss – wanting something for a minor sniffle – that doctors assume all patients are like that. It takes perseverance to get treatment if there is something wrong, especially if there isn’t something instantly visible such as a rash.

My most recent hospital experience was when I went to Accident & Emergency with severe stomach pains. The doctor on duty diagnosed it as constipation. It turned out to be pancreatitis. 

You would have thought the clue lay in the fact I was still in such pain despite taking 8 paracetamol, 8 codeine, meloxicam (an anti-inflammatory drug) & 3 audmonal (an antispasmodic) per day at the time! In the end I refused to get off the bed so she threatened me with an overnight stay in hospital. I took it. Eventually I was diagnosed with pancreatitis & should have been in intensive care.

Some of us only complain when there’s something seriously amiss. That goes for our friend & for us two.