MEDICAL MATTERS

[Bruff]

I few years ago now, I pitched up at Charing Cross Hospital with a suspected slip disc whilst going for a big ‘yahoo’ on the cricket pitch. Pretty quickly they realised there was no slipped disc and so it’s painkillers and on your way. However, the Spanish Dr dealing with me said one thing that has stuck with me. And that was in his experience, British people do not drink anywhere near enough water and if we wanted to do one thing to improve general muscular weakness, it was to keep well-hydrated. Forget all the other fancy stuff.

Richard Broughton

[Marilyn]

I always support the drinking water thing...
But I think I would be a bit "narked" if I fronted to A&E with severe back pain and it was suggested I needed to drink more water...
And yes, I think I would drink more water per day than the average English person. Our climate dictates the need to keep hydrated. I even take a big glass to bed. ..( hubby refers to it as a vase of water, but it is just a lovely big glass )

[Stanley]

Thanks for the reinforcement both of you. It makes so much sense to me, we know our kidneys act as filters and need water to function. It works like a charm for me, if I don't bear it in mind I get odd shooting pains that have no explanation... Can you remember 'pee green pills'? Carter's Little Liver Pills that turned your pee green when you took them, very popular because people 'could see they were working'. Not sure if they did any good though. Again, can you remember the advertisements for Kruschens Liver Salts? 'Every picture tells a story!' a picture of an old bloke doubled up with back pain.... I've always taken an interest because I've fought my back all my life. Doc Morrison gave me the most accurate piece of advice after I refused the corset and the operation to fuse three vertebrae. He told me 50 years ago that the good news was that God would eventually cure it for me by fusing them! He was right, as long as I observe the rules I have learnt through experience I now have only occasional pain. One of the advantages of old age!

[Tripps]

I needed A&E last Saturday evening - managed to stab myself in the hand whilst opening a jar of nutmeg. Would not usually go for such a cut, but I thought the wound was deep enough to need stitching. I had to wait most of the the regulation four hours for treatment, but I've no complaints since it was a low priority case, and I saw an ambulance on blue light arrive whilst I was there.
Treatment was impressively thorough - saline pad whilst waiting, two Xrays "to see if any of the tip of knife remained in the hand, and whether the bone had been damaged ", a tetanus injection, three or four stitches, and a box of antibiotics to go home with.

Memorable moments -
Doc - Anyone want some suturing practice?
Me - Never mind practice, I would like someone who's good at it!
Doc - No - I just want them to watch - actually you've struck lucky - I'm a surgeon from London - I'm quite good at stitches, I just work here as a locum at weekends. Been doing so for years.
Admin man at midnight, -"Doctor - can you stay for another two hours?"
Doc - I'm a bit tired.
Admin - What about one hour
Doc - OK.

PS - just had a follow up questionnaire in the post.
"How likely are you to recommend our A&E to a friend?

[Moh]

Still here go in tomorrow now!

[Stanley]

At least there was a bit of humour in evidence David! How's the hand now?
Moh, I feel for you.... I shall be thinking about you. How long do you expect to be in there?

[Moh]

Hard to say, they say a week but they get you out asap. Just had tea and toast have to be there for 11am. For op. This afternoon.

[Stanley]

You will be in my thoughts Moh, best of luck with it all. I hope you are soon back home making a successful recovery.....

[Wendyf]

Hope it goes well Moh.

[Stanley]

I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that trying to read is too big a strain on my eyes. It's almost as though my right eye is deteriorating but I'm pretty sure it's the effects of eye strain. I must be patient! July 24th isn't that far away!

[Moh]

Well here I am back home. The doctor was pleased with the result so it is resting the leg at home. The most painful part is the skin donor site. As i had an epidural I found the procedure of skin grafting very intereßting, especially the equipment used.

[Stanley]

Glad you are back home Moh. Look after yourself. When I had my vasectomy they gave me an epidural and the surgeon asked me how it felt, he said it interested him. I told him the best thing to do was have one himself.... Mind you, after the initial crunch in all my muscles in that area it worked, all I could feel was the movement as he pulled bits about and snipped away. One of the most interesting experience I have ever had.....

[Tripps]

Well done Moh, and glad to see that him indoors is keeping up the standard of your cuisine. You're very brave to have watched it all - I thought of trying an epidural for my last hip job,(thought recovery might be quicker), but was pre-empted by the surgeon who it seems, routinely gave both general and an epidural to all his patients.
It was done in a private hospital - I suppose those who pay want the best.

I had my stitches out yesterday, and my hand is all healed up nicely.

[Cathy]

Talking of watching our operations being performed on us, I watched when my daughter was born by caesarean.
It was weird but awesome. So glad I was able to experience it all.

[Stanley]

David, remind me what happened to your hand.....
Moh, continue the good work!

[Tizer]

This is a good example of British scientists providing innovations to help millions of needy people in less developed countries, something we are good at and which also boosts our standing in those countries.

`Pocket optician' as good as eye charts'
"A smartphone app is as effective at testing eyesight as an optician's clinic, a trial suggests. The team, at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, hopes it can transform eye care for millions of people in remote parts of the world. Trials on 233 people in Kenya, published in JAMA Ophthalmology, showed the phone produced the same results as eye charts. More than 285 million people around the world are blind or visually impaired. It is often easy to treat with something as simple as a pair of glasses or cataract surgery. But too often people are beyond the reach of even a basic eye exam. The team in London, with colleagues in Scotland, modified a smartphone to develop a series of eye tests that could be used with little training and were easily portable. The Portable Eye Examination Kit (Peek) uses the phone's camera to scan the lens of the eye for cataracts. Its "Acuity App" uses a shrinking letter which appears on screen and is used as a basic vision test. It uses the camera's flash to illuminate the back of the eye to check for disease." LINK

[Sue]

I had major bladder surgery with an epidural but was also tranquilised. The Drs were discussing their vasectomies and I joined in the conversation. They thought I was asleep!

[Stanley]

I heard that news item as well Peter, we listen to the same programmes! Did I hear one of the participants in the discussion raising the point that it's all very well making it easy for people to test their own eyes but there needs to be a system in place to actually take remedial action and that could be a big problem....
Sue, they put a screen up so that I couldn't actually see what he was doing so I spent the time criticising his technique and swapping jokes with the two spare nurses at my end of the table.... I had to wait on the table while the pieces he had cut out were examined in the lab to make sure he had got the right tubes... I had some fun with that one! (It was OK in the end and I still have the letter telling me I was officially firing blanks.....)
By the way, before he agreed to do the op he wanted to hear my reasons why I wanted it done. I told him I didn't see why I should expect my partner to take potentially dangerous drugs on my behalf (she didn't want kids and I had my share) and he immediately said that was a good enough reason. He had the same view. Tragically the surgeon died young not long afterwards from a rare disease he picked up abroad.....

[Stanley]

So, sleep is the 'power cleanse' ,for the brain an d gives us time to flush out the toxins which may have a bearing on Altzheimer's.... (LINK) If this is the case then I am bullet-proof. With very rare exceptions I sleep well and make sure that I get at least seven hours a day. As many of you know I also advocate two periods of sleep in the day, one from 22:00 to 04:00 and another in the afternoon from noon until when I waken up, usually two hours. All this stems from the days when I was desperately short of sleep owing to the long hours I worked. I soon polished the ability to cat nap whenever I had a chance. I am pretty sure that if anyone tested me they would find that I have the ability to slip into really deep sleep very quickly. I think that makes me a very lucky person and I pity anyone who is an insomniac. But I can't help wondering if it is all luck. Plenty of exercise, good food and whenever possible a good routine must have something to do with it. I've always seen sleep as being as important as food. In the days when I did 40 hours driving in the first two days of the week I always had an arrangement with my employer whereby on Wednesday morning I slept until woke naturally, often 10AM in the morning. I've always said that was a lifesaver! Many people used to ask me how I managed to get up at any time after midnight when I was tanking milk. I always told them it was dead easy, the hard thing was going to bed eight hours earlier!

[Cathy]

I love my sleep and always have, even my Mother said that she never had any problem getting me off to sleep. I live on my own (have done for a while) and don't have to fit my day or routine to match in with anyone else's. Most days I don't have to 'hit the ground running' and I can follow my own time-table, which quite often means I get up about 8-8.30 am. I like to read in the afternoon which sometimes means I might have a nap as well but it's very short. I prefer to go to bed at night feeling tired and to wake up in the morning feeling balanced.

[Stanley]

Cathy, a doctor once told me that the hardest work your body ever does is digest a meal so a sleep after dinner is no bad thing...... I know what you mean about pleasing yourself but then I have Jack on my back.... I might be kidding myself!
Have a look at THIS for some disturbing news for people indulging in high stress endurance exercise. Some of them might be in danger but don't realised it because very few investigations look exclusively at the right ventricle which has most of the work to do.

[Stanley]

I'm watching the calendar, just over six weeks until my trip to Burnley and the laser cleaning of my left implant. They tell me it will be a vast improvement..., I hope so, it's all getting very wearing as the vision in my left eye slowly deteriorates... Roll on the day!

[Stanley]

There was a good talk on R4 this morning by a lady who advocates self-medication for animals. She was giving examples of a technique whereby instead of arbitrarily medicating animals they were given access to various foods and treatments and allowed to choose their own. I have al;ways believed in the old saying 'a little of what you fancy does you good' and have observed cattle searching the hedgerows for particular plants and herbs which I can only think instinct was driving them to find them because they were short of something in their diet. Pigs eating coal and licking copper water pipes. Dogs eating grass.
I have no problem accepting that the elephants cited in the talk knew what would cure them when the vets had given up.
Have a look at THIS for an example....

[Tizer]

Birds sometimes collect bits of herbs to line their nest and that's thought to have evolved because the herbs have anti-microbial and insect deterrence properties.

I could do with some anti-viral properties at the moment. Our week in Cornwall had mixed weather ranging from cold, heavy rain and gales to hot sunny days and we had to spend more time indoors (shops, museums etc) than usual, which means more contact with people. We visited Padstow and found it heaving with foreign tourists, probably all there to sample Rick Stein's food - although to be fair there's a lot to see in the town. A soon as we got back on Saturday I started with a sore throat and it's progressed into a bad respiratory infection. Nights are an ordeal, with little sleep and lots of coughing and I'm spending more of the night on the sofa than in bed. Serves me right for going on holiday!

[Wendyf]

Hope you make a quick recovery Tiz.
When I took our new dog into the veg garden for the first time he went straight to the comfrey and started eating it's leaves.