Gavin McHamish
Medical
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Breathing?
As a child of 5 or 6, I had to go in to the British Hospital in Buenos Aires and spend a couple of hours breathing into a machine. Then at Saint Andrews boarding school in 1949 I had to have 8" wooden blocks under the foot of my bed, which was embarrassing in a long row of beds. I don't remember ever knowing what it was all about. I think even then it was fashionable to have something to make your child a wee bit special.
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Tonsils & adenoids
In 1946, while the family was visiting my father's parents in Balloch, Scotland, I was put in hospital in Alexandria to have my tonsils and adenoids taken out. I can't remember anything about it, except vaguely the bed, and being given ice-cream because of the tonsils.
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I can see today all sorts of things being inflicted on kids (and adults) for the same sort of crazy and fashionable ideas (the science? and see below).
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Asian Flu
In 1957, at school in Berkhamsted, there was Asian Flu, and for over a week we were all confined to our dormitories. It was there that I first heard and liked jazz - Louis Armstrong's "Mack the knife". I don't think anyone actually got Asian Flu.
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Appendicitis
In about 1959, while I was at Mrs Spanton's (the holiday home for about 12 Anglo-South American school kids), I got appendicitis. I went into a hospital in London for about week (3" scar) and for a week at a rest home, one of those places you see in old films with men scattered around the lawns, in wheel chairs smoking pipes, and with pretty nurses in attendance.
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Maekel's Diverticulum
In about 1975, while I was working at Boving, I had one day started shitting black, and feeling unwell. I called the doctor, and she came round right away (those were the days!) and she promptly called an ambulance and I was rushed to Hammersmith hospital. They looked in me with a endoscope and decided to operate. Afterwards I had an 8" slit down my tummy, and they told me I had a Maekel's Diverticulum, which is like an extra appendix, which had burst. The also showed me a photo of all my 18ft of my intestines laid out on a table. The first couple of days of recovery was very painful, and it was then than I learnt of the joys of morphine, and how you could fall in love with the nurse giving it to you. It was during my time there that I also lost faith in medical insurance. I had to spend hours on a hospital payphone to them, holding my connected saline drip above my head, trying to get a private room, but they said they couldn't do it unless I had advised them before I had gone into hospital, etc. Actually I quite liked being in a general ward. I was off work for 1 month, and then OK.
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Ulcers
BUT, I started having trouble with my ulcers, which would get quite painful, and I had several visits to hospital because of them. Once they had me in for an endoscopy. They gave me a pill and an injection first. I was groggy for a while, and then when I came to I phoned work to say that I wouldn't be in till tomorrow. Fifteen minutes later I phoned them again to tell them the same thing. This was repeated two or three times. When I went back a few days later I asked them about it. They said they had given me an amnesiac, because having an endoscope down your throat you had to be conscious, and was so horrible that if you could remember it you would refuse to have it done ever again.
Then in 1986 an Australian doctor discovered that intestinal ulcers were caused by helicobacter, a bacterium (for which he got the Nobel Prize), so I had a 2-week course with an anti-bacterium and it was cured for good. Magic! Until then everyone had asserted that stomach ulcers were caused by stress and various manly bad habits, and that the stomach was so acid that bacteria couldn't possibly exist there. I reckon that because of that they had not been too careful disinfecting the endoscope during my previous Maekels experience, and I was probably infected with helicobacter then. Ulcers had been, for decades, the most common cause of hospitalisation and death. Medical reputations, and a whole industry, had been built around it. And then it just disappeared overnight, without even a sorry. Remind you of anything?
Also, amnesiacs became favourites for date-rapes. If you try it on and she's OK with it then that's OK, and if she's not OK with it, then afterwards no one (including her) will be any the wiser.
Blood pressure
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In the later days of my residence in Damerham I went for some reason to the GP, and he took my blood pressure and said it was high and prescribed me 5mg of Ramipril and 10mg of Amlopidine daily. Even after my stroke some years later the doctors said I should continue taking them, which to this day I do.
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For the past few years I have been taking my blood pressure every day, and plotting it. It has been steady at 25/75, +-5, which is pretty good. I also take my temperature and blood oxygen level every day. This gives me a good reassurance.
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Anti-depressants
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During my final time with Prim, she persuaded me to go to a counsellor once a week, and she went separately to the same one. We would talk and chat (actually I quite fancied her) but then, when I talked about my views on suicide, wham! She insisted I go with a note to my GP. I realised later that the rules for a counsellor were that any mention of that dread word should result in that consequence.
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Anyway, the GP put me on some pills, which I later realised were anti-depressants. They were OK, not doing much. But then I realised that, a few hours after taking one, I would experience a definite downer, and I'd then take one of the pills, which seemed to counter it. Pretty soon I was well in it's grip, in a seemingly continuing and even accelerating cycle. When I left Prim I decided to go cold turkey to wean myself off them, and over a couple of months it worked. But I have to say that the process was far more difficult, and required far more fortitude, than giving up smoking. And there are millions of people, obviously withy less fortitude than me (!), totally in the grip of these pills. "I'm on anti-depressants" is seen more or less as a badge of honour. And no doubt the GP profession does quite well out of it all.
Chloresterol
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At some time after all this my doctor put me on the anti-cholesterol drug Simvastatin, for no particular reason. There was a big cholesterol thing in the 2000s and 2010, good and bad cholesterol etc, and then a few books were written about the anti-statin scam, where GPs were actually paid by the amount of anti-statins they prescribed. But in the end the antis won, and nobody argues about it much anymore. But I argued with my doctor about it, but he would not take me off the prescription, so I continued to get Simvastatin anyhow along with my blood pressure pill prescription from the pharmacy. I tried with and without Simvastatin, and then oh, what the hell, it is easier to take them than throwing them away.
Stroke
This happened 2 days after we got back to London from Buenos Aires in December 2009. I woke up, was brought a cup of tea, I think, was feeling fine, then got up, walked a couple of steps, and fell to the floor. Amber soon came in, and called an ambulance, I vaguely remember being taken downstairs on a stretcher, then in hospital (Queen Mary's) having some tests.
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Lots of people have strokes, but most of these are where a blood clot goes up from the heart to the brain and causes some trouble, which is relatively easily cured, and after a couple of days you are fine and carry on as normal with your life. REAL strokes, like the left ganglionic haemorrhage that I had, where the bunch of nerves going from the brain to your right side, get scrambled, or in my case detached. There probably always was a weakness there, but it was just like unplugging an electric plug from the mains - one moment it's there, and the next it's not. And you can't plug it back in. You can eventually feel a fair amount of touch on your right side, but no movement. They say that you have a million strands to your nerves, most of which are never used, and that your nerves can have 'memory, but who knows?
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Andrew Marr had a similar stroke after mine, and he went to a much-publicised doctor in Florida for a cure which involved you having injections while being upside down, but it didn't work. And Andrew was younger than I had been, and obviously being famous, he had much much more care that I had, but he still has no use of his right side. His balance is better, so he can walk better, and thus gets a lot more practice at it. The younger you are when you have a stroke, the more years you have left in life to incentivise any improvement. If you are in your late sixties, as I was, you tend to think oh well. I had no idea that Amber would make my life so worthwhile, and that the internet would develop so far as to keep me amused.
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And I think that disabled people tend to put up with it and get on. So many people are far more disabled that I, sometimes since birth, and their live seem worthwhile to them.
There is a lot that is difficult with only one hand and that being the left one. It can be amazing what people don't realise is difficult, or impossible. Anything where you need to hold something steady with your other hand, eating, doing up your shirt buttons, getting your socks on, cutting your nails, etc, etc. And typing, with one finger, though you are forced to think more thoroughly.
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General
The body has a remarkable facility to repair itself. Can you imagine the technology that would be required to fix a cut finger otherwise? If I have aches and pains and sniffles, so long as it is not too debilitating, I wait for it to correct itself, even if it can take a long time. About 10 years ago I had a sore left shoulder, but not too bad to go to hospital. Then years later I realised that I had forgotten all about it. People seem to think of outrageous reasons for the cause of these minor inconveniencies, and treat them in fashionable ways, and perhaps use up NHS resources for them.
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Old age
Apart from my right side, as I proudly tell everybody, I'm the healthiest person I know. No headaches, no tummy problems, very few colds or coughs, no muscular or back problems, no sleep problems (though in can be uncomfortable only lying on your back and right side, particularly in a bed with no provision for an electrical back raise/lower).
There is a tendency to be overweight - I like my evening wine, and get no exercise. I once tried a fit-bit type of watch, and it told that I had done 23 steps at the end of the day.
My willy is a bit of a problem (don't worry, it is no longer a sexual organ). It used to be normal, about 3in at rest and 6in erect, but it has shrunk right down to about 1-2 inches, and sometimes it can more or less disappear altogether. This can be a problem peeing. I normally use a bottle, 1.5in diameter and 3in long, with a cap at one end and a rubber bag at the other, and I can go about 3 times in it (at my age you don't do much at a time). It's OK, but doing it privately can be quite a daunting problem.
Apart from that there is memory, of course, names in particular. I frequently have to go through the whole alphabet one by one to trigger it. Medium and long memory is iffy, but it can be amazing the odd things, even from childhood, and Spanish, you remember.
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I sometimes wonder whether these can be problems of dementia. But when I ask people, they say no. But they probably would, wouldn't they?.
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Blood test 22/04/2022
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Urea and electrolytes
Serum sodium level 144 mmol/L [133.0 - 146.0]
Serum potassium level 4.9 mmol/L [3.5 - 5.3]
Serum chloride level 107 mmol/L [95.0 - 108.0]
Serum urea level 5.6 mmol/L [2.5 - 7.8]
Serum creatinine level 57 umol/L [60.0 - 125.0]
Below low reference limit
eGFR using creatinine (CKD-EPI) per 1.73 square metres > 90 mL/min/1.73m2 [> 89.0]
Result: Normal. What you need to do: No Further Action
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Serum lipid levels
Serum cholesterol level 3.9 mmol/L
Serum triglyceride levels 1.54 mmol/L [< 1.7]
Serum HDL cholesterol level 1.58 mmol/L [> 1.0]
Serum LDL cholesterol level 1.62 mmol/L
Serum cholesterol/HDL ratio 2.47 [< 5.0]
Serum non high density lipoprotein cholesterol level 2.3 mmol/L
Result: Satisfactory. What you need to do: No Further Action
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Urine microalbumin profile
Urine albumin level < 5.0 mg/L
Urine albumin/creatinine ratio Not detected.
Urine creatinine level 7.0 mmol/L
Result: Satisfactory. What you need to do: No Further Action
Full blood count
Total white blood count 6.3 10*9/L [4.2 - 10.6]
Red blood cell count 4.62 10*12/L [4.23 - 5.46]
Haemoglobin concentration 141 g/L [130.0 - 168.0]
Haematocrit 0.456 L/L [0.39 - 0.5]
Mean cell volume 98.8 fL [83.5 - 99.5]
Mean cell haemoglobin level 30.6 pg [27.5 - 33.1]
Mean cell haemoglobin concentration 309 g/L [315.0 - 350.0]
Red blood cell distribution width 12.7 % [10.0 - 16.0]
Platelet count - observation 255 10*9/L [130.0 - 370.0]
Mean platelet volume 7.2 fL [8.0 - 12.0]
Nucleated red blood cell count 0.0 10*9/L [0.0 - 0.1]
Neutrophil count 3.6 10*9/L [2.0 - 7.1]
Lymphocyte count 1.5 10*9/L [1.1 - 3.6]
Monocyte count - observation 0.7 10*9/L [0.3 - 0.9]
Eosinophil count - observation 0.3 10*9/L [0.0 - 0.5]
Basophil count 0.0 10*9/L [0.0 - 0.2]
Result: Satisfactory. What you need to do: No Further Action
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Haemoglobin A1c level - IFCC standardised 41 mmol/mol [20.0 - 41.0]
Result: Satisfactory. What you need to do: No Further Action
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Liver function tests
Serum alanine aminotransferase level 19 U/L [0.0 - 45.0]
Serum bilirubin level 7 umol/L [0.0 - 21.0]
Serum alkaline phosphatase level 78 U/L [30.0 - 130.0]
Serum albumin level 35 g/L [35.0 - 50.0]
Result: Satisfactory. What you need to do: No Further Action
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Thyroid function test
Serum TSH level 0.47 mU/L [0.3 - 4.2]
Serum free T4 level 15.2 pmol/L [9.0 - 23.0]
Result: Satisfactory. What you need to do: No Further Action
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Not bad!
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