Retirement blog about my health issues

I must admit I’ve been delaying writing this retirement blog until I had clear news of my health. Several months ago I wrote a retirement blog about visiting a doctor in Ireland. I might almost say it’s quicker to drive to Holyhead, take the ferry to Dublin and drive to the West coast of Ireland than wait for a doctor’s appointment at my local surgery. Of course after Brexit I won’t be able to do this. In fact we might not be allowed to take a holiday in Ireland at all.

But that’s for later, for now I’m just reporting that my concerns about my health go back to that last Ireland visit to a doctor there. Even before that I was worried about the pains in my stomach and bowels. The Irish GP didn’t completely lay my fears to rest. He changed my medication and suggested a visit to my own GP when I got home. Quite ironic.

Obviously I was thinking the worst, like you do. These were the symptoms of cancer, bowel or stomach. Either one not desirable. So I swallowed my pride and made an appointment. Just three and a half weeks in the future. At this appointment, in June, the doctor pushed the first of a number (in the future) of fingers up my bum. She reported all seemed well but, just to be on the safe side, sent me for an examination at one of our local hospitals. A private hospital with me as a National Health patient.

You could tell it was a private hospital because the doctor, a specialist in bottoms, was dressed like an air hostess. Another finger up the bum, disagreed with the optimistic verdict of my GP and booked me in for a colonoscopy and a stomach scan. This was the middle of June. Another few weeks of wondering what my fate was to be.

In the short term my ‘fate’ was the ‘procedure’. So first week in July for the ‘procedure’, lovely word, very unlovely experience. No more fingers, now the actual colonoscopy. For this my doctor was dressed as if for a cocktail party. Long black diaphanous (is that the right word?) ball gown type thing. I suppose if you make your living by sticking your finger, and other things, up people’s bums you can cheer yourself up by dressing nicely.

So the procedure was carried out with the doctor in her ball gown and the nurse talking to me about strawberries. The topic designed to relax me I guess. When it was done I was visited by my doctor me in my private room and her still in her ball gown. I’ve removed a polyp she tells me and showed me the photos to prove it. That’s nice. I don’t think it’s cancerous, but I’ll send it for a biopsy (sounded like she was sending it on holiday) to be certain. I heard the good news but still worried for another couple of weeks until my polyp was pronounced safe.

Now bring on the stomach scan. We’re at the end of July now. Even though this was a non-intrusive procedure, in some ways I won’t bore you with, it was the most unpleasant. The technician had none of the cocktail party, social skills that the bottom doctor had. Her first words to me, apropos nothing, were, you’re very gassy. Then, she said, I can’t see a thing. None of this was comforting but then maybe it wasn’t meant to be. I thought, you know love, I can’t see you going down well at any party if that’s how you speak to other guests.

After more scanning and hence more pressing on my over-full bladder, which is how you’re supposed to arrive for the scan, she sent me to the toilet. She said you don’t need to fasten your trousers because you’ll be undoing them again when you get back. Through that door there, she said.

I walked through the door, as directed, clutching my unzipped trousers straight into the waiting room. The woman in her wheelchair managed to stop short of a scream. Thanks a bunch I thought, again an interesting ‘party tactic’. Drop your trousers and walk into that room over there (the one where the guests are).

Anyway, then another couple of weeks waiting for these results which brings me to the beginning of September. I get the all clear from my ‘procedure doctor’, she seems to have been promoted to pilot for this visit. So yes, all good, except just one last sting in the tail, you have an enlarged prostate (it presses on your bladder and makes you pee more, thought you might want to know this) and you need a PSA test to check on prostate cancer and also I suggest you see a urologist. Oh goody.

So to speed this story (although not the process) up a bit. I go back to my own surgery (although not a doctor – I can tell he’s not a proper doctor because his first words to me are – this test’s rubbish, well not rubbish it’s good, but not reliable). Fortunately I’ve had PSA tests before and know all about their limitations – false positives and false negatives – so this is not as big a shock as it might have been if I just wandered in there all innocent and trusting. He said, we’ll call you if anything is ‘wonky’. Again not a term a proper doctor would use.

I got the results on the PSA test they were fine ‘for a man of your age’, my own doctor said (in a letter in which she apologised again for keeping me waiting, this on the lateness of an appointment I walked out of in frustration, but that’s another story). Anyway by now it is mid-October and I think I’m clear of the cancer scare. The one that’s been on my mind for the last 6 months (since before Ireland visit).

All I have to do now is go back and see my GP next week and then presumably be referred to a urologist, whatever that is. But I thought I’d write about this now. I’ve put off writing it for quite a while and, if I don’t sum it up now, I’ll have forgotten everything that happened to me even with the help of my diary. Which, as you can see, is quite a lot, over quite a long time.

That said, I know I should be grateful that the NHS still exists for people like me and, assuming all goes well over the next few weeks, I will be even more grateful.

*There is some debate about whether the roof actually is asbestos. The company who came and looked at it were quite clear that it was but then that enabled them to put the price up to £4,500 on account of half of this was specialist removal of said asbestos. My dog-walking chum whose son-in-law clears asbestos for a living was equally clear it wasn’t. I know who I believe.