This Camel’s Back Is Looking Mighty Creaky…

<rant>

F.M.L.

No, seriously – f*** my life…

So, I was supposed to be having gynaecological surgery.  Nothing major, and nothing I hadn’t experienced before – in and out in one day, and a recovery time of around a fortnight.  I had been lucky enough to bypass the usual channels and administrators – sitting next to the surgeon as he flicked through his diary to find a suitable slot for me.  I knew precisely how lucky and privileged I was to have a consultant so willing to cut out all of the middle-men and synchronise his work week with mine, and for the first time in a while, I felt as though I had a little bit of control in my medical treatment. However (you totally knew that was coming, right?) a huge red flag was unfurled at my pre-operative assessment: the same red flag that I had waved in front of my GP months earlier only to be told, “you’re fine”.

Well, the anaesthetist certainly didn’t believe I was fine and had the operation cancelled until after a cardiac review could take place – because, you know, anaesthetic can be a pretty fast track to a flatline.  The reason I’m so mad about this is not because of the inconvenience of having to re-jig my life to fit in the new operation date (or because every delay increases my risk of haemorrhage), it’s due to remembering so clearly the look on the GP’s face which warned me that pursuing the issue would get me labelled as ‘medically anxious’ – so, rightly or wrongly, I shelved my concerns.  On the plus side – cardiology, yay?

While this unnecessary drama was playing out in the hospital, I was finally getting what I assumed would be the full musculoskeletal assessment I had put so much effort into arranging.  I’ll be the first to admit that I have very little faith in Physiotherapists, but that particular one seemed ‘okay’ – he took a fairly full medical history and actually read the letter that my Osteopath had very kindly written to outline his concerns about my well-being.  So, I was caught more than a little off guard when, after suggesting a referral to a rheumatologist, he stated that it may be impossible for such a thing to happen as I had already been to the Rheumatology department once before. Wait, what…?

The Physio actually stated that he would have to write a ‘carefully worded letter’ in order to mitigate the risk of the request being rejected outright.  This is despite the fact that zero blood work was done during my initial (and seemingly final) consultation. Now, I may have missed the memo, but as far as I know, Rheumatologists have not been replaced by Soong-type androids, so their infallibility is hardly guaranteed.*

But, here is that one straw that might just break the proverbial camel’s back; and in light of everything else it will seem trivial – please believe me when I say it’s not. At least, not to me… In my last post I was grousing about the removal of American Misfits from the TV channel FrontRunner – well, now the whole damned channel has disappeared.  Yep.  All of their listings are still available, but all we get when we turn to the channel is a message telling us that it is no longer available on Freeview.  In essence, not only will I not see a return of those loveable Misfits, I’ll also be without the luxury of watching British Ice Hockey on the actual television.

So, nobody should be surprised that I am wrapped in my duvet (in midsummer, to boot….) watching Rodney Mullen clips on Youtube, should they? Should they!?

Gonna need a lot of this guy….

</rant>

*My advice to anyone in the UK who is about to embark on their first Rheumatology outing is to insist that they test you for absolutely everything before they go full Gandalf the Grey on you…