Sunday, April 23, 2006

Arthritis, my arse.

Helen told me about that visit to her GP:

As she explained her symptoms -- back pain and sometimes in her right arm -- he typed her comments into his computer. He asked a couple of questions about the type of pain (dull, stabbing, burning?), then said, “Ah yes, arthritis.” Then, without taking his eyes off the screen he reached for his prescription pad and wrote down something off the screen. Two drugs. Helen and Mark looked them up later. One of them is an anti-inflammatory and the other a painkiller. So no doubt they will be effective whether she has pulled a muscle, trapped a nerve or any number of things. But arthritis?

As he’s given her an anti-inflammatory, one can only assume he means rheumatoid arthritis. But Helen has no swollen joints, or any of that redness or heat you would associate with rheumatoid arthritis. The doctor has just made a wild guess, not a diagnosis, based entirely on what his computer said. As my brother Steve said, "Arthritis, my arse."

Perhaps I should explain why arthritis has struck such a chilly note: there was a family friend who suffered the onset of arthritis in her twenties and she became crippled by it. She was bed-ridden and in constant pain all of her adult life. Eventually, surgeons removed her joints to give her surcease from the pain. God, she suffered, and her death was a blessing. Hers was an extreme case, but even so arthritis is one of those things that will give me sleepless nights if a young family member is ‘diagnosed’ with it.

The GP is a prat.

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