Not far away from there. I live on the funny little squiggly bit that the post office say is Newcastle but it could be Newcastle/North Tyneside according to the Council tax people... Anyway, it looks like several of us have had the "meh, we don't know what it is, but you don't seem to be dying so whatever..." diagnosis. I'm not entirely comfortable with that. On one hand it's not heart disease, but on the other "what the heck is it then?"
I'm in Aus not GB, but I went to hospital to have my gall bladder removed due to gall stones and I made the comment that I was loosing body parts and would soon have a very empty abdomen. Next to go would be my appendix, and the Dr said oh we have already taken that one out last time when we did your small bowl resection. I never would have known if I hadn't made the comment!
It doesn't bother me so much. Sometimes, you get sick, then you get better. If it doesn't appear to be serious and there is no obvious treatment, I'd rather the NHS not spend thousands of pounds running pointless tests to satisfy my idle curiosity.
I used to work in the NHS and wasting cash seems to be the norm. My department spent thousands on decorating - new carpets, painting, cupboards, new staff room, blah, blah, despite the fact that the building was to be torn down in a few months. And torn down it was... Upon quizzing this, I was told that if they didn't spend their budget, then they wouldn't get the same budget (or more) the following year...
Wasting money in one area is not justification for the NHS wasting more money in another. That's pretty much the same anywhere. I've seen people buy £1000 worth of paper clips because they needed to use up their stationery budget. It's just poor management and lazy financial planning
I think people are too used to being given answers and every medical show on telly having people diagnosed and cured in 45 minutes with adverts. It's annoying but there's still so much to learn about health and diagnostics and even then you still need humans to use that knowledge. My missus walked around for weeks with pneumonia until doctor's decided to send her for a chest x-ray and saw all the patches on her lungs. It's exasperating knowing she could have been treated much earlier but then you have to stop and think....they took a picture of what the inside of her lungs looked like!!! That's amazing! You are always going to get stories of "doctor's didn't know what was wrong with me".
People just dont understand healthcare is a process, and most doctors you meet are currently doing on the job learning. I always feel sorry for the FY1s at this time of year.
They will be from this year, constant revalidation is coming in, a good idea but pointless when pathogists will still have to be tested on advanced lifesupport etc
