Monday, November 19, 2012

When does something annoying become serious?

At first I thought that it was a severe case of 'tennis elbow' caused by reaching into the back seat to pick the newspaper up but the doctor has now confirmed that it's potentially a bit more serious than that.

 Of course when she asked when I had first noticed the pain up my left arm and across my shoulders, coupled with my inability to dress myself fully, hold anything in my left hand and generally feel pretty useless I'm embarrassed to reply 'about four weeks' so I lie and say 'about ten days'. I don't have a fear of doctors but a fear of wasting doctors time, thinking that they could probably seeing somebody with a more serious ailment than the one I present them with.

Anyway the current treatment is anti-inflammatory tablets, the link suggests some other possible routes of treatment but to be honest, and as the doctor said to me, with diabetes you are fairly limited in terms of choice. It's a real bugger though, just getting to that point where everything is running smoothly healthwise and something else comes along.

2 comments:

Span Ows said...

Well you could always try to masturbate with your left hand and see at what point the pain becomes unnoticed...

You should never fear wasting a doctor's time, what you should do is try o get more of it! We are all very lax about going to the doctor's so it is irritating that when you do go you are given 10 minutes!

This happened to me recently when I visited my new GP for he first time since moving back to the UK, of course I had a list of things to chat about only one of which was sorted with any satisfaction, two others were heart-heartedly and begrudgingly agreed to (by the doc!) and a forth was questioned for most of the time allocated. grrrrrrrr...

Paul said...

Funnily enough my daughter said that if I were a teenage boy the doctor would know the cause!

I agree with your second paragraph the problem the NHS has is all those cancelled or no-show appointments.

I know the feeling with regards to the last bit, and sometimes they rattle through a list of possible causes and solutions that I come up just as confused as when I went in.