I almost made it through to a full nights sleep, 7:00 am and I was woken by a strong spasm in my ribs and once awake I knew I had to go to the loo. Why is it that the second you wake you are aware of your bladder, yet you know perfectly well if you hadn’t woken, you would have slept on totally unaware? Apart from that the first thing I noticed when I put a toe outside my duvet was the blessed feeling that I wasn’t stepping straight into a blast freezer, having said that now I am beginning to find the house just that bit colder than I would like, as always I felt it first in my hands, from where it slowly spread. I can’t say what has aggravated them but I am getting no peace this morning from my intercostal muscles, they seem to be set into a long train of spasms from which I expect over the next couple of days to see the bruising darken again. I have been keeping an eye on all the bruises around my ribcage, well mainly on my right side the ones on my left side seem to be further apart, but what I have noticed is they aren’t quite as permanent as I thought. The don’t ever go away but they do fluctuate in colour, becoming paler when things are quiet and darkening up within 36 hours of the muscles attacking me again. I am guessing a bit here, but to me, that means the damage is deeper inside than I thought as the blood that makes up the bruise is taking so long to reach the surface of my skin. I was in the kitchen making my breakfast when one of those spasms hit, this time very much across the base of my sternum, there was one point that seemed more painful than the rest so I put my finger on it so that I could walk to the mirror to see if there was anything there to see, but as soon as I touched it, I felt a small but hard lump, protruding from the edge of the first rib below my sternum. It felt no bigger than the surface area of the index finger that was above it, but it was a lump and it was caught between muscle and bone. There was nothing to see and as the muscles relaxed, it vanished, no matter how far I pushed my fingers into my stomach and around my ribs, I could find nothing.
If it wasn’t for the fact that I am good at odd lumps, some that even my GP has sent me to the hospital for investigation, only for them to vanish before I got there, I might be worrying, I’m not in the slightest. I started finding Ganglion cysts, so many years ago that I can’t actually place their start, at first, they were where they are most common, in my hands around the joints and once the doctor told me what they were I stopped going to see him about them. In the olden days, they used to hit them with the family bible, not because they thought they were evil, but because the family bible was big, heavy and available. They are nothing but fluid filled sacks that grow on tendons. The last one I went to the doctor about was in my neck, a more unusual position, but I now have several, none visible but clearly there to the lightest touch. What I found this morning is identical and as I can only find it when the muscles push it into range, mirrors a couple of others. I guess the funniest lump I ever found actually managed to disappear right under my doctor’s hand, he was checking it for size and so on, when it just vanished, he concluded it had to have been some kind of blockage as it was in my breast, all I was thinking was thank god it waited until then, as I would have felt so stupid saying I had a lump that wasn’t there to be found.
I find it actually quite funny these days when I think back on the things that I have, like millions of others, turned up at their GP’s surgery convinced that we were dying because of, when in fact, all those aches and pains, the spasm, the loss of balance and everything else that I stopped going to see them about, is actually the thing that probably will kill me. Well unless my body has some other trick lined up that I am yet not aware of. I don’t really now understand where our fear of cancer has come from, if you look at the facts there are a million of other things that will be far more likely to end our lives before cancer gets a chance to even have a look in. I can only guess it started because it was suddenly in the public eye, although it’s documented back to the ancient Egyptians, I doubt it was a commonly used word until the last century. If I had to make a stab at it, I would say it was when they linked smoking to cancer and then they linked almost everything else that most of us have probably been in contact with at some point in a normal life. If there was one thing that I wish doctors would stop doing, is trying to scare us to death, we die quickly enough without their stories and that they actually focused on the real killers, like heart attacks and strokes, still the biggest killers worldwide.
Someone said to me the other day that they had found it really hard to find a doctor who was interested in treating the ill, rather than being totally focused on this modern fitness drive. On one level, that of a person who is ill and needs their help, I couldn’t agree more, doctors do now seem to be totally focused on prevention and not on treatment. That is wonderful for those who are still well and I really hope they never become ill, but we, the sick are still here and all the fitness drives in the world won’t make us well. What I keep hearing on TV these days about how it is up to us to stay fit and healthy and how obesity is totally our own faults, does nothing to improve how I and I suspect millions of others feel about their spreading bodies that can’t be exercised. There is nothing in this world that I can do about avoiding a future of possible diabetes, heart failure or strokes, yet daily I hear over and over that it’s my fault. As I said yesterday, it’s bad enough seeing it, without being told wrongly that we are to blame, we’re not. I am strong enough as a person to brush most of it aside, but on my bad days, well I admit it doesn’t help hearing it again, for those who are really struggling with depression, I can only imagine what it does to them. It often feels like those of us with chronic health conditions are being brushed under the medical carpet, with them just waiting for us to disappear as we are making their result tables and offices look messy. I don’t get that attitude as unless there is some major breakthrough that isn’t visible yet, chronic illness will continue even after they have the majority running marathons, not smoking or drinking and living the perfect life, some of us will be still sitting inside, in pain and unable to take part. Not because we don’t want to, but simply because our bodies through no fault of our own, have given up.
Please read my blog from 2 years ago today – 1/11/12 – The visit
Two Rooms Plus Utilities 