Take a bunch of these and don't call me

David Sherman

Sometime in the last quarter of my life, to the medical establishment, I stopped being a person. I became a collection of symptoms. It mattered not what I did or used to do, if I worked or how I worked, if I worked out or sat glued to my widescreen. What mattered were symptoms. What may have caused them was not a question posed or discussed. I was, more or less, a lab rat.

Luckily, my problems, so far, are not sinister. They were of the aches and pains variety. And hence I became a biped pin cushion to be scanned, scoped, X-rayed and, on rare occasions, touched.

“There?”

“Yeow!”

Of course, these aches and pains, mostly arthritis, bursitis, tendonitis, torn rotator cuff, muscles wrenched, pulled and spasmed, limited life, work and pleasure.

But behind crowded waiting rooms, in the sanctums of padded tables blanketed in disposable white paper, desk and computer, was no time to discuss details. There were injections to be endured, prescriptions to write, and, down the line, strangers to visit. Dressed in thin blue gowns that admitted wind to places the sun doesn’t usually shine, I was inevitably at the mercy of young women seeming to be dreaming of beaches or ski hills.

They would push and prod limbs and joints with all the amiability of the machines they manipulated in similar fashion. Here, on the padded tables, I was even less than a collection of symptoms. I was a collection of body parts to be scanned, scoped or x-rayed with the warmth one imagines of a butcher arranging a side of beef to cleave.

There were other barely clad bodies, none of us particularly attractive, waiting outside the door this day. And tomorrow and all the tomorrows after that. An assembly line of aching, mostly greying, anonymous bodies mute and resigned to succumb to mechanical instructions. All vulnerable and increasingly familiar with appearing semi-naked in front of indifferent technicians.

The results of all these hi-tech views of our body parts were then electronically transmitted to a doctor with a prescription pad and abbreviated diagnosis comprehensible to ignorant lay people. Inevitably, the pharmacy then awaited with vials of anti-inflammatories or painkillers or anti-spasmodics and, if lucky, more vials of caps and tabs to counteract the side effects of the first round of anti-inflammatories, painkillers and anti-spasmodics. If anyone had warned you of the side effects.

If lucky, you found a pharmacist who would take the time to tell you what you were to ingest. If not, there was a bag waiting filled with bottles of tabs and capsules – blue is the favoured tint since tests have shown people respond best to blue meds as opposed to red or yellow. All good but a pharmacy of little blue tables requires a magnifying glass to read the lilliputian print to avoid eating the wrong blue tablet at 4 a.m.

Often the side effects were not explained. After all, the doctor who kept you waiting for anywhere from one to three hours, without apology – his time is worth more than yours and his work is more important that yours – was too busy. You might be able to ask whoever answered his phone and she’d get back to you. Maybe. Or you make another appointment to discuss the side-effects and wait the requisite week or two or three and then the two or three hours to find out, “Yes, those pills are knock-out drops. How about Plan B?” “Yes, those meds will give you heartburn that mimics a heart attack but there are acid reducers for that.”

Seems doctors hadn’t seen the Times story linking acid-reducers to dementia. Perhaps hadn’t taken them, didn’t know, didn’t care there is a reason the body secretes stomach acids but doctors are busy people, unless they are gregarious types. And that dementia scare, well, don’t believe everything you read.

Some, in fact, have personality disorders like the rest of the population. Like to talk or are moody, truculent, superior, temperamental. Or couldn’t bother to explain, as one did, “Meds have side effects. You decide if the side effects are worth the supposed palliative effects of the meds.”

Some, if they found out you were a journalist, stretched the allotted time confessing how the government mistreated them and couldn’t you write a story about their misery? One would complain about his lot in life before escaping forhis long weekends in Florida. Life was tough.

If you were lucky enough to find the right doctor – my favourites were older than me and have retired and I’m onto a new batch – he would tell you, “No, those are terrible drugs, I won’t prescribe that,” or “Take these only for two weeks. They’re not good for you.” “No, those will make you fall asleep in your soup.”

Too late. The GP had already given me them and I had planted my face in my pasta.

“These meds really depress me,” I said to my now-retired orthopaedic surgeon. “Yeah,” he said. “They're depressants. Try these.”

Thanks for telling me. I was measuring the noose.

There was the doctor at the co-op in town where you have to lineup at 8 a.m. to get an appointment later in the day, who told me my neck problems were “mechanical and you just have to suffer” and my knees were half way to needing replacement.

My old friend the ortho, now punched out and no longer hearing people bitch or slicing and replacing hips and knees, said my knees were far away from replacement time. Then signed off by saying, “Don’t be in a rush. I really don’t like tearing people apart and trying to put them back together.”

His cautionary tale is branded into my brain. Surgery is never mundane.

I paid to see an orthopaedist in Portugal but that was really about headaches and arthritic pain. She examined my shoulder and agreed it was messed up but my time was up and there were other patients waiting. For my headaches there was an injection with a sewing needle that froze a nerve in neck and it worked beautifully for about three days or 100 euros a day. And another doctor she knew would, if I had a new MRI, for about 500 euros, invade my neck and kill my headaches for three weeks to a year, no way to know. And anyways, there were other patients waiting and she was heading toward the door.

“Those exercises you showed me last visit seem to give me the headaches they’re supposed to stop,” I said, one foot out the door.

“Perhaps do them gentler,” she said, opening the door wider. I was slowing the assembly line.

I am part of the post-war, demographic bulge of baby boomers suffering from the pains and illness of extended life and an over-burdened medical system. Doctors see an average of 20 patients a day. Average time allotted per patient: 18 minutes.

I suggested to Reisa that perhaps we had to be our own doctors. I checked out an AI website and it suggested raising counters or putting cutting boards on thick books so I didn’t have to look down and hurt my neck and summon a headache. I could raise my plate. I could arrange my computer on an ergonomic table so the keyboard was in front of my eyes. I didn’t have to look down. It all worked. No needles, scopes, scans, pills required.

Artificial intelligence is far from intelligent. It regurgitates information from a variety of sources. Maybe doctors should try it.