The Hard Stuff and Winter Pressures

I’m back on the morphine again. This is not because I’ve become an addict and can’t resist it; indeed, only a few weeks ago I went through the cold turkey of withdrawal. Nor is it because I have done something bad to my hernia repair, but because I’ve got a hip injury that has been excruciating, particularly at night. I tried all the normal painkillers but they just didn’t work, so I reached for the bottle that had been on the bedside table since I came home from hospital and took my first 3mg dose. After a further pain-filled and sleepless hour or so, I took another dose and then another, until I began to feel the pain receding a little and I sank into sleep for a while.

The pain in my hip had come on steadily. At first I felt an ache when lifting my right leg in and out of my trousers. Then the pain became more widespread across my hip and buttock, which felt swollen and very sensitive to touch. I went to see an osteopath who manipulated me and gave me some exercises to do at home. I followed them carefully and iced the hip, but the pain didn’t reduce. It was always worse at night. Then I woke with a severe stabbing pain in my right hip. I leapt out of bed and began to rub my side, I could hardly walk. It was a spasm; my hip was throbbing as if it had terrible toothache. I took plenty of morphine, but I was in agony for the rest of the night.

T was away, so I had to drive myself to A& E. It was Sunday. The waiting room was full already. It steadily overflowed with new patients as few were called to be seen. Eventually I was called into the clinic. There were only a couple of doctors on duty. One examined me briefly. He told me that my injury wasn’t serious enough to be treated today. He gave me a short course of anti-inflammatory tablets and sent me home to see my GP. I asked what was causing the pain? He said that to him it wasn’t that important. He was only concerned if the problem was sciatic or it stopped me peeing. What about an X-ray, I said? He said I needed a MRI to determine the source of the pain, but I probably wouldn’t get that on the NHS.

I had waited for four and a half hours in Craigavon and was seen by the doctor for less than five minutes. I drove home thinking that all the reports which said that the NHS was stretched to breaking point in A & E were indeed true. The problem was exacerbated by people misusing A & E with trivial complaints, so that doctors had to sort the long queue of patients into those that needed emergency treatment today and those that could be returned to the GP. Considering the level of pain I was in, I was very disappointed to have been put in the latter category.

I spent another painful and sleepless night. If I took enough, the morphine would knock me out for an hour. But I would always wake up in agony. I went to see the osteopath again. He said that the pain in my hip could be coming from my lower back, my sacro-iliac joint or my hip. He said he would refer me for a MRI privately at a clinic in Hillsborough. It would cost £500 but would probably be done by the end of the week. I didn’t think twice, I had to find out where the pain was coming from and what could be done about it.

After several pain-filled and sleepless nights I got in to see the GP. He reiterated the osteopath’s view on the source of the pain. But importantly he restocked me with morphine. I was now taking around 30mg a day, mostly at night. This was almost two thirds of the dose I was on in hospital. The morphine combined with severe lack of sleep left me burnt out and in a very dopey state during the day.

I got a call from the clinic and went in for my MRI. It was brand new and had been opened by Rory Best. After paying up and answering the long list of questions about metal in my body I was put inside the machine. An MRI scanner is rather narrow and noisy. They put headphones on me. Throughout the forty minutes of the scan I was assailed by the gushy and rather puerile warbling of an unrecognisable boy-band. I wasn’t able to take the headphones off as my arms were strapped down by my side. When I was released I asked if they had chosen the music especially, no they said, it was the only CD they had. I drove home with a DVD of my scan. I didn’t think I would be playing it at home this evening. But I would get the radiologist’s report the next day. The luxury of private medicine.

It was disturbing to see, at first-hand, how the underfunded NHS only really works for acute problems and how the private sector has been encouraged to expand and take up the demand that is not able to be treated. I am very lucky that I can afford to pay for a MRI privately to help diagnose my injury. Otherwise I would be in extreme pain with no prospect of finding a diagnosis or appropriate treatment anytime soon.