Your doctor knows you inside out
About 30 years ago a young doctor, new in town, walked into the Squash Club. Those were heady days to be an Offaly man with a love of hurling and keeping fit. We connected from the start and that man and I have been friends ever since. There are a few people we all meet during a lifetime that we can say it is a blessing and a privilege to know. Liam is one such person; someone whom I can quite literally declare that my wife and I trust with our life; and that trust has been proven to be well founded.
At that time, in the mid 90s, I would still have been in that bumptious bracket claiming that nobody should ever go near a doctor unless they are sick. Let’s just say that, luckily for me, people like Liam changed my mind. Twice since then I have been diagnosed with cancer that only for early diagnosis and surgery would have killed me by now. He has also been instrumental in saving my wife’s life in the last year. Dr Liam is not the only great doctor at the centre – but he is the one who ‘knows me inside out’!
Now, having established the fact that waiting to be sick before your visit to the doctor is waiting too long, recently my inquisitive mind is asking if it has gone too far in the opposite direction, and if some patients push it so far as to be over-diagnosed? Was it Alexander Pope who said; ‘a little knowledge is a dangerous thing’?
A lot of people are now having their first consultation with ‘Doctor Google’, before attending their GP, expecting to have their own diagnosis endorsed. Some time ago, I heard a man say that he was just back from seeing his doctor with a problem. ‘It didn’t take long, because I had Googled it and was able to tell him what I needed,’ the man said. All I can say is that doctors are patient people… because if I was that doctor, it wouldn’t have taken long either!
Hypochondriacs probably cannot help themselves and worrying about their health when there is nothing to worry about is very real in that patient’s head. The doctor will give that patient the same time as anybody else in order to reassure them that they don’t have the disease they fear.
Regular readers of YCBS will be only too well aware that what we write here doesn’t have to be ‘right’. A column is only an opinion, but coming back to our earlier point, I wonder has mainstream medicine moved into the realm of over-diagnosis?
Let me explain what I am on about…
The latest technology has made it possible to detect disease years before it would naturally make itself known through symptoms. Modern medics can detect the earliest signs of say, Alzheimer’s Disease, dormant neurological condition and other afflictions that might not affect the patient for another 20 years, if ever.
I know that if I had the choice, I wouldn’t want to know until I had to. Look at all the worry and anxiety not knowing would save. And remember, ‘worry is interest paid on a debt not due’. Not every cancer cell grows to threaten life, but when they are found on early tests, they have to be treated with equal aggression to a ‘big C’.
The pharmaceutical industry has a vested interest in promoting (unnecessary?) medical tests. Also my old bugbear of social media is adding to the contribution of encouraging over-diagnosis. The Lads and myself, back in the old never-go-to-a-doctor-unless-you’re-sick, days would have claimed that the more tests you have, the more likely the outcome will be they will find some borderline abnormality to start treating you for. Today, there may be some truth in that assertion due to the over-diagnosis. Having said all of the above, when I get a call from Liam telling me; ‘your bloods are due to be done’, my answer is always; ‘how soon can you see me?’.
Despite enduring many illnesses during her lifetime, great medical care and modern medicine allowed my mother to enjoy a marvellous quality of life until the age of 95. I remember being out canvassing with Pat Coogan many years ago. We called to a house of an elderly family I was friendly with and I asked Mick; ‘you know Pat, don’t you?’. Mick’s answer stuck in my mind and it says everything about all of the above. ‘Why wouldn’t I know him – and his brother keeping three of us alive!’ The brother was their doctor …
We wrote a column earlier this year on nursing and the caring profession – which brought in an unprecedented response. Most of us have our own special doctor – whom we hold in admiration, respect and affection. And why wouldn’t we… ‘and he keeping all of us alive’!
Don’t Forget
There are not great men except those who have rendered service to mankind.