Old age and ill health

Doctor doctor give me the news

I’ve got a bad case of medical blues

Oh man, I’m tired of seeing doctors. Actually I’m just tired of paying them. And there seems to be no end in sight.

I’ve never been a particularly sickly individual. Aside from tonsillitis, chicken pox, a broken ankle, measles and the odd cold or flu, I’m fairly healthy. But I turned 30 and suddenly I’m making personal acquaintances with doctors and eating through my medical in about 9 months.

I had an accident at the office in about August last year – I didn’t pick my feet up while walking back to my desk and fell up the stairs. I landed on my left knee – hard. I spent a few hours in the ER, was given crutches and generic myprodols and told to take it easy for a few days. It took about 3 weeks before I was walking normally, but a few people suggested I see a physio. As work was paying (I claimed from Workmans Compensation), I figured I had nothing to lose. I completed three appointments so that the doc could massage my kneecap back into place.

At the beginning of October I went to see my GP about my right eye – it was weepy and scratchy. He diagnosed conjunctivas and gave me eye drops. A week later I still wasn’t better so he wrote me a script for another bottle of eye drops. A week after that I had developed a major head and the eye wasn’t any better, so the doc had another look, suspected scleritis and referred me to an ophthalmologist.

The ophthalmologist confirmed the diagnosis and prescribed more eye drops, and myprodol for the raging headaches that split the right side of head like a meat cleaver through rump steak. 10 days later I went back – I was no better. This time I got amoxicillin tablets, which finally did the trick.

Or so I thought.

Less than 2 weeks after declaring to the world that I was once again in good health, the nasty little infection invoked squatter’s rights. I managed it with the same drops from the last prescription, and more myprodols. It seemed to get better over the holiday, but came back when the office opened in January. I went to see the eye doc again last week, and he can’t find any infection (but did find an allergy, which means yet more eye drops). He’s now referred me to a Rheumotologist, because scleritis is usually a symptom of diabetes or arthritis.

That’s not the end of the story.

Last week I was the unfortunate victim of a taxi stupidity. Some idiot stopped in the middle of a two lane road to, I assume, pick up or let off a passenger. I slammed on brakes, burned about 10 mm of tread of my brand new driver’s side front tyre, and narrowly missed the car in front of me. Unfortunately the car behind me didn’t have enough stopping distance and used my poor, elderly little Carlos as a punching bag. I felt the impact in my mid back and figured I’d be stiff the next morning. However, when I started feeling pain a few hours later, I figured I’d better have myself examined. The GP didn’t suspect anything serious. He shot me full of Voltaren, gave me five day’s worth of Cataflam and sent me on my way.

Now I just have to wait and see what the new doctor has to say. If she can’t find a cause for the scleritis, I’ll most likely be making annual visits to the eye doc to manage the eye infection. 

If this is what getting old does to your body, I do hope that my life expectancy doesn’t extend much past 80.