Medical matters again
Sometimes I frighten myself with how blasé I am regarding medical matters and my own body.
I used to be terminally squeamish with anything too gruesome or detailed about other people’s illnesses, diseases or injuries. For a long while I was prone to feeling a mounting queasiness whenever people began, usually with self-satisfied relish, to recount the more extreme symptoms and effects of their sundry accidents or surgical procedures in my presence.
At its worst it could cause me to faint. To this day I can still remember, as a mid-teenager (about the age of sixteen?), sitting in my parents’ house with my grandmother, passing out whilst watching a television documentary about the former Manchester City player Colin Bell.
At some point in his career he had suffered a serious knee injury and the programme showed him undergoing his rehabilitation. In one sequence he was seen sitting on the edge of a treatment table in shorts in the company of the club’s medical staff, passing a copper chain through a hole in one side of his knee and then out the other – apparently a treatment to aid recovery and/or prevent the early onset of arthritis, if memory serves.
It was just too much for my immature but fertile imagination. A week or so later I was taken to the GP – and thence to some specialist or another – where I underwent a series of tests including what I suspect was an ECG scan (?) or similar, whereby I had to wear a series of electrical wires strapped to my chest (plus a little box that was ‘monitoring’ something) for an entire day. I never asked what the test was designed to tell the medics – maybe it was whether I had an irregular heartbeat, or epilepsy, or some other brain-fade type syndrome – and in fact I can’t even recall ever told the outcome.
In the fifty years since I have on two or three occasions felt the onset of similar queasiness, including once when I fainted whilst socialising in the bar of a famous sports club. My recollection is that one minute I was part of a group discussing something medical or another – and the next I was being helped to my feet, having slumped to the floor.
The weird aspects were that I cannot for the life of me remember the exact topic we were discussing, but distinctly recall (once I’d been righted, embarrassingly suddenly the centre of attention for obvious reasons) instantly feeling 100% okay. A short time later some paramedics rushed in and examined me, wanting me to go to some medical room or another so that they could keep an eye on me, but I refused. All I wished to do was go to my seat in the stand and watch the forthcoming match. Which I duly did – and then went home – without incident or subsequent symptom or issue.
Today, in my capacity as a full-on medical bore, I am returning to the subject of my hip replacement operation last summer.
During my consultations with the various doctors and the surgical team in the run-up to the (elective) operation, I was told plenty of things about why I needed the operation and what it would entail – including plenty of detail about the aftermath and how I might best undertake and aid my own recovery.
The gist of the rehabilitation advice can be summed up in two words: ‘work hard’. It was stressed over and over again that it was a case of ‘you only get out what you have first put in’.
In addition I was handed a fistful of pamphlets on every subject from arthritis to hips, to hip operations, to post-op periods in hospital and what to do after one returned home. I did flick through all of these but (to be frank) took in no more than 10% of the information.
Luckily for me, that 10% included the details of the 24-hour specialist hospital helpline that I could ring if I had any medical query at all.
As it happened, on three or four occasions in the month after I left hospital I had genuine semi-urgent concerns about the dosages of the pain-relieving and other drugs I was taking. On each I called the helpline and immediately received sound, simple advice – not least that, even when going anywhere socially (e.g. to stay with friends for a weekend) to ensure I knew the location and contact details of the nearest main hospital to where I’d be staying. If I then had a problem, I was then first to ring said 24-hour helpline again – and then, if so advised, then call (and/or just get myself to) said nearest hospital, with which my surgical team would automatically liaise.
Anyway.
Yesterday by arrangement I attended the pre-op assessment centre at the hospital where I’d had my hip operation on a call-back because I had volunteered to take part in a research project into hips, or hip operations, or arthritis … or something.
This is where I came into my blog this morning.
At some point I had given consent for some of my hip bone removed during my replacement operation to be used in laboratory experiments and research.
Yesterday my other half asked at breakfast exactly what the research was attempting to find out and I replied (honestly) that I hadn’t the faintest clue.
Upon being admitted, I was received by the researcher-doctor I’d seen when signing up as a guinea pig five months previously and gave him a sit-rep on how I had recovered from my op and was feeling now (summary- ‘pretty good’).
He then told me – because I asked – what it was all about.
They’re researching a comparison between what (as a lay person) I’d describe as the difference between hip problems caused by ‘wear and tear’ arthritis and those caused by rheumatoid arthritis … and inflammation of the joints.
I was asked if I had any problems with arthritis in my body joint generally (apart from in the hip I’d had replaced). I responded “None”. This figured, he said, because all the tests on the bone fragments that had been removed from me pointed to the fact that my hip problem had been caused by ‘wear and tear’ and not rheumatoid arthritis.
He then revealed – if I understood him correctly – that their initial findings were that 40% of hip replacements demonstrated the presence of inflammation (thereby suggesting some degree of rheumatoid arthritis).
Lastly, a note on the traffic conditions to the south of London yesterday (possibly caused in part by the train chaos caused by the five-day strike or whatever it is currently going on in the south of England).
It took me over an hour to travel less than 11 miles to my appointment … and about 80 minutes for the return journey (mind you that was in the middle of the afternoon rush-hour, about 4.00pm onwards). This for an appointment last precisely 35 minutes, including a 10 minute wait before seeing anyone and afterwards spending another 10 minutes spent filling out three questionnaire forms before departing.
