HELP MA BOAB

Three months I’ve had this pain in my back; the soft tissue inside my right side feels swollen, is sore when I lay back against cushions or pillows – when I lie down and turn on my left side I feel it settle, move. If I turn suddenly it’s as if someone is stabbing me. Scary thing is the doctor doesn’t know what it is, is taking steps (bloody slow ones) to rule stuff out...so now I’m waiting for an appointment to see a physio because it’s probably a muscle problem. I asked the receptionist how long this could take before I get to see anyone: up to 12 weeks she said. ‘I could be dead by then,’ I said.

Pee-in-a-cup says it’s not a water-works problem and bloods aren’t coming up with an answer except that my haemoglobin (did I spell that right?) is low and another blood test will see it that’s a fluke. So, if I wait ten or twelve weeks and it’s not a muscle problem then I get to wait for some kind of imaging test – by this time I will have had the constant pain for 6mths – a further 12wk wait puts me in the position of WTF! I have worked all my life since the age of fifteen and hardly ever used the medical services of the NHS and now I get to understand that all that medical rush and panic to save lives on Grey’s Anatomy is a fiction. I can only hope I’m not a gonner.

I always thought that by the time I was really old I could relax in the arms of our wonderful NHS and that diagnoses would be snippety quick and I’d be fixed up and moved on out to heal before the next problem reared its ugly head. Now we have to face the horror of American-style medical health that will fire humungus bills at us if an ambulance as much as looks at us crossing the road. Prayer for the gods: don’t let that be our way forward.