Just when I thought I was doing well and could set all kinds of goals, things changed.
Pain paid me a visit.
Now I’m not usually a wus, and I think I have a fairly high pain tolerance, but let me tell you this was not fun.
I got out of bed on a Saturday night and I could hardly walk. Visions of me using a walker, or worse, a wheelchair, came to mind.
“Oh no,” I thought, “is this where I’m heading?”
I called my doctor at 8:30 Monday morning and by 9 he had called me back. After discussing my symptoms he had a prescription waiting at the pharmacy for me. He also moved the tests I was to have mid-February up to the beginning of the month as he said to “get on top of things”.
At the moment he seems to think I may have a pinched nerve. That sounds good to me. I would prefer that to something more serious.
He asked me how long the pain had been going on and I said
“about two weeks”.
He told me not to wait so long to tell him and I made some feeble excuse about knowing how busy he is. He assured me he was never too busy to hear from me and we left it at that.
When I hung up the phone I thought, “You just lied to your doctor. It’s not because he is so busy that you didn’t phone, it’s because you were afraid of getting bad news.”
And that’s the truth. I am afraid of getting bad news.
I will see my doctor at the end of this week for the test results, and I hope it’s not going to be serious.
In the six-and-a-half years since my diagnosis I have not had one bad experience at the Tom Baker Cancer Centre. That is amazing, don’t you think? And I am there often, as little as two a month up to five-to-six times a month. Every month. For six-and-a-half years.
I have always been treated very professionally by caring, kind, staff.
When things change for me like they did just recently, my doctor is pro-active and makes things happen right away for me. And he does this day in and day out.
I, for one, believe that our medical system is in good shape and that it works. I also believe that our doctors are worth their weight in gold and should be paid accordingly. Where would we be without them?
