Bluffers

Back in January 2015, I wrote about my visit to the Bladder and Bowel clinic which you can find here .At the time, I had to allow some space between the visit and writing because the nurse had wound me up so much. I spent the whole appointment listening to her tell me how ill her husband was with PoTs and how she had chronic fatigue. I am an empathetic person and although initially I was pleased that she knew what PoTs was, I wasn’t happy that the person that spent the most amount of time talking was her and none of it was relevant to me. She may have been trying to be empathetic but how it came across was that she was in direct competition with both me and her husband for the title of “Who is the sickest”. It’s never been a game I have wanted to play and I am shocked by just how many people indulge in it.

I can’t lie I wasn’t exactly thrilled about the fact that I had to attend the clinic this week, that it was going to be with the same nurse, one that I had put a complaint in against and had specifically asked not to see ever again. It's nice to know the NHS listens to its patients when they make a complaint against one of its staff isn’t it? **sarcasm** I had visited the dentist on Tuesday morning, so I was already exhausted and although I hate going to the dentist, I’d have actually preferred it to an appointment with this nurse. As my husband says (and apologies for the crudity) “She’s wetter than a mermaids wet bits”.

Before we left to attend the clinic I had already explained to Jay what I would and wouldn’t put up with. I told him that if she pissed me off I was leaving the appointment. I wasn’t putting up with the drivel I’d had last time. I don’t think he quite believed me but I meant every bit of it. I was particularly distressed at the thought of having to go through an intimate examination with someone who I just can’t stand. I appreciate that it is for medical reasons but it still would have felt like a massive violation. Out of all the people who have treated me over the years and are still involved in my care she is the only one that produces this type of visceral reaction. I have been lucky as for around the last 18 months I have been dealing with the Bladder / Bowel care team, (through telephone consultations), based in a different area so haven’t had to deal with her. Unfortunately if I want my care to take place at the local hospital I have to deal with her.

Anyone who knows me, knows I have a real problem with people within the medical profession claiming to know about my medical conditions and then by opening their mouths  prove themselves to be idiots. I can’t stand someone doing that to me. If you don’t know. say you don’t have any knowledge in that area, don’t bluff and make shit up. As a patient who suffers from rare-ish complications from an under diagnosed condition, I read up and educate myself because if I don’t no one will do it for me. Most people I know with Chronic health conditions do this to empower themselves. Obviously these days it is an awful lot easier with the advent of the internet. However there are still some medical professionals that refuse to believe that Joe public can understand medical papers or that anything on the internet regarding medical conditions is remotely factual.

Unfortunately the nurse I have to deal with at the clinic is a chronic bluffer. I don’t expect a person to have extensive knowledge regarding each patient's medical conditions that would be utterly impossible. She may see 15-20 patients in a day, all with varying medical conditions and no disease / condition affects the sufferers in an identical manner (despite what the medical textbook may have told you). So within seconds of entering the consulting room she had got by back up. I won’t pretend that I wasn’t already massively on the defensive, purely due to my dislike of her. She started with wanting a recap of what had been going on health-wise since my last visit and the fact that I had been so unwell that I had been reliant on telephone consultations.

Basically if you haven’t read my blog before in 2016 I developed a spontaneous Cerebrospinal Fluid Leak or CSF leak for short. This meant I had the most horrendous headaches imaginable every time I sat up, stood up or basically raised my head off the pillow. I spent much of 2016 confined to my bed, in a darkened room listening to audiobooks. When I look back now I can see effectively I lost a year of my life, I still to this day think last year was 2015. I can’t shake it even though I know its 2017, my brain just refuses to accept 2016 even existed for me. For a taste of what 2016 was like here is the first blog post I wrote on the subject called "Never a dull moment"

The nurse asked me about my visit to the specialist hospital for EDS. It’s something I have never written about as it was such a raging disappointment. 90% of people who develop a spontaneous CSF Leak are discovered to have  or have already been diagnosed with a connective tissue disorder of which EDS if one of them. I had been referred to this clinic as the hospital I was being treated at wouldn’t perform an epidural blood patch (something that had an 80% success rate first attempt to heal the leak). The anaesthetists that would have had to perform the EBP refused on the grounds that I have EDS. So I was left in a Kafkaesque situation where EDS had caused the CSF Leak and the doctors who could get me better were refusing to because I had EDS. Now imagine my horror when 30 seconds into my appointment with an EDS specialist when he tells me “EDS doesn’t cause CSF Leaks”.

I relayed this to the nurse who told me “well he’s the expert, he would know”. I could feel Mr Myasthenia Kid grab my arm, he knew that this was like a red rag to a bull. I pointed out to her  politely and without the use of bad language that this wasn’t the case. So she then replied “ well if there is only a small amount of medical evidence, it won’t have been enough to persuade him” I am paraphrasing. How I didn’t lose my shit there and then I have no clue as I could feel the anger rising in me. Here I am sat with someone who has no fucking clue (let’s be honest) and she is sticking up for a doctor that has no fucking clue. I pointed out to her that there were 100’s of medical papers on the subject, that the CSF Leak Charity would love to educate her on the subject and that the charity EDS Support UK had a massive article on EDS and Spontaneous leaks in its last magazine. Her response “oh” not I am sorry, I didn’t know that or that’s really interesting I will look into that. Just “oh” because “oh” always makes things better right? You maybe able to tell that I am still very annoyed by this.

Her next statement was breathtaking in its inaccuracy “well it’s healed now” . My leak has semi healed, it’s not 100%. It is no longer at the level of the 2016 dark days however every evening or it can be in the afternoon depending on how long I have been upright for, I get a positional headache that will only go when I lie flat. The headache can vary in intensity but regardless of the level of pain it is always accompanied by photophobia (so I need to lie down in a dark room). This means most evenings by 7pm I am in bed. I explained all this to the nurse who again tried the empathy approach “ well that’s not very nice for you, having to go to bed with a headache how do you sleep?” For about the second or third time I had to explain that a CSF Leak headache is the only headache that improves or disappears when lying down. It was irritating me no end that she was pretending to know all about CSF Leaks when she didn’t even understand the basics.

She then said “well you may have noticed that I didn’t have the lights on in the office before you came in, I have chronic fatigue which gives me photophobia “ This was now the third time she had told me she suffers from chronic fatigue. Her next suggestion then proved she had neither listened to me nor understood CSF Leaks on any level. “Well have you thought about wearing dark glasses all the time to stop the photophobia?” Jay said he could hear the anger in my voice when I replied to her and said “ as I just told you, I only get photophobia when the CSF Leak headache starts in the evening, I don’t get one without the other. Wearing dark glasses all day won’t stop the photophobia, the only thing that would stop it and the headache would be to lie completely flat all day every day. As I did that last year and it has significantly improved, I refuse to do that now”.  What was her response ? “oh right”.

Thankfully after embarrassing herself (can you embarrass yourself and be totally unaware that you have done so?) she decided to actually talk about the subject she had clinical knowledge about my bladder issues. Unfortunately my bladder has been misbehaving for a few years. We believe I have a condition called neurogenic bladder, so I have issues with urinary retention. I also have leakage issues or on some occasions I just wet myself without even knowing that I needed to have a wee. Touch wood I haven’t had any retention issues for about 12 months. Back in the early part of this year the leak issues were horrendous and the worst they have ever been. They improved when I was given the medication pyridostigmine Bromide, also known as Mestinon. This gives the medical profession another massive clue that I have seronegative Myasthenia Gravis but hey what would I know I am only the patient?

The effect of mestinon on my bladder was immediate. I no longer needed to wear pads if I was taking mestinon regularly. I now only wear pads if my MG like symptoms are really bad as I know I will leak then or when I leave the house for medical appointments. I still don't have the confidence to attend appointments without a pad on because i have had accidents in the past. The difference on and off mestinon is really night and day. Crazy really. It was thought that possibly I had Fowler’s Syndrome, to me it looks like I probably had neurogenic bladder and Myasthenia Gravis, as the bladder can be affected by MG.

The nurse was pleased that things had improved so much, although she had no clue why and a) I wasn’t going to explain it was due to the introduction of mestinon and b) I didn’t expect her to. We ended  the appointment on reasonable terms, she did understand that it was important for me to avoid UTI’s ( every time I use a catheter I end up with an infection) as it impacts the rest of my health severely and a simple infection could take me a month or more to get over. So she will contact the urologist and ask about an antibiotic to take as a prophylactic, in the hope that it prevents an infection starting. I have tried every way known to (wo)man to use a catheter but every time ends with me suffering with a UTI. So some good did come out of the appointment.

I don’t have the expectation when I see a new doctor or nurse that they will be able to fit all the pieces of the puzzle together. They don’t teach medicine that way and they don’t practice it that way either, which is a shame because so many conditions have a wide impact across many different systems of the body. I don’t expect someone who works in one area of medicine to understand another area. That would be like asking a Cardiologist to perform a hip replacement or a Plumber rewiring your house. I understand and appreciate that medical professionals are experts (or should be) in the areas that they work in. What I won’t accept are bluffers  or people who make it up as they go along and neither should you.