Get to the bottom of your pain
IT’S bizarre how your life can change in a short space of time. One minute I’m surfing epic waves with friends and family feeling like a 15-year-old grommet and a few hours later I’m hobbling like an old man with excruciating pain in my right hip. It’s the sort of pain that makes you cry and makes you wonder if you should go to hospital.
I take some analgesia, rest and hope for the best. Despite my best efforts, the pain gets worse and is now present when I am not walking. Not a good sign. My Uber driver is quiet as we head to the emergency department where I have spent 11 years working. I am greeted by familiar, friendly faces and begin the triage process, forms, blood tests and X-rays.
I have some theories of what the pain could be after what seemed a trivial collision with my paddleboard the previous day but I am only guessing. The department looks different from a bed. The smiling faces are reassuring. More pain relief kicks in and I await the diagnosis after the results. A little knowledge is a dangerous thing.
The department is relatively quiet and my fellow patients give me a look of almost sympathy as we cross paths on the way to radiology.
It’s a battle between hoping all the tests are normal and I am just a hypochondriac and they have found something and I need to be admitted. I would rather return to my hotel reassured than face some debilitating problem with my previously superbly normal hip.
I think of the hundreds of patients I have seen in this very bed and given good or bad news to. I am conscious of the humanity that is shown to me by my colleagues and I am grateful to be in good hands.
I am conscious of the friend of a friend who I rang earlier in the day who is young and struck down with some rare and severe illness I had never heard of. He is in hospital and, despite me only being able to offer sympathy and the advice that he was getting the best treatment possible, he was grateful and said I had helped.
A new day has dawned with a new set of challenges but at least I can limp to my flight to Tauranga to speak at another conference about wellbeing. The tests are reassuring and the pain is better but I am none the wiser about the diagnosis. Hopefully the condition is self-limiting, meaning it gets better by itself despite what the medical profession throws at it.
So what is the point of this article, apart from the ramblings of a sick medico in his own system? Well, the first point is that if you have pain it is important to try to relieve it through simple analgesia. If that doesn’t work get the necessary tests to exclude something serious.
Do your best to relax and be calm through your patient journey and return the kindness of the people looking after you. Finally, be grateful for every step you take, every breath you make and every day that breaks. You never know which one may be your last.
● kyndwellness.com
● drtomonamission.com
● healthythinking.biz
Dr Tom Mulholland is a GP with 30 years’ experience in New Zealand. He’s currently on a mission, tackling health issues around New Zealand.