Rant - My knee and NHS

[penance]

A few years ago i was knocked off a bike my a myopic car driver, proceded to bounce along the road on my already dodgy knee.
So im carted off in an ambulance and promptly spend the next 8 weeks with my leg in a brace due to cartlidge/ligament damage.
The brace gets taken off and i have physio for a few weeks, untill the physio tells me they cant really do much and i need to see a specialist, so off i go.
I spent around 12 months with the specialist saying theres not that much wrong with me. My answer was, why cant i go upstairs without pain or sit with my knee bent for more than 20minutes?
Well after a while they decide there is something wrong, they admit to me that the hospital should not have fitted the brace in the first place and that has compounded the original problems.
They then realise that the lower leg and foot attached to the offending knee are kinda pointing out to much. The solution - to break my leg below the knee, reset it pointing the right way and stick an external scaffold on for 5 months. Ah, and theres no gaurantee it will work!
You must be jokeing says i, so you tell me theres nothing wrong and suddenly want to break my lag? NO THANKS
In the last 2 years i have tried osteopathy - spent loads still no better
repeated visits to my GP - tosser, My girlfiend works in the Xray dept. of a local hospital, she arranged for one of the surgeons to give my knee a scan. all i needed to do was get a refferal from my GP to make it ligitimate, would he do this? would he hell, because i went and asked him to do it he got very offended and refused!
I even went to a natural health shop yesterday to see if they could offer anything to reduce pain and swelling - hmm to much tree hugging for me.
So here i am again, sat home not getting paid and not able to move around much.
Im only 33 and the stairs are an epic adventure
Ok admitedly it's not all the time, but it flares up every few month and when it does i feel like im old before my time.
And all because a young driver didnt bother to look before pulling out

Rant over, just needed to get it off my chest, girlfriend is bored of hearing it

 

[MO!]

Damn!

I had a crush injury to my left hand (i'm left handed), when I was 16. Had two operations to save my middle and index fingers over a week in hospital. I then had to return as an out patient regularly to MOnitor and assess it. I had metal pins holding my fingers togeather and looked like edward scissor hands with them poking out about an inch or so from my digits. When I eventualy had them out the physio started (and went on for over a year)! Ouch! Fingers may seem small and not much, but f@#king hell! The pain was severe! Starting withsimple things like just trying to squash playdoe would still hurt and was weird breaking into a sweat just trying to do that! I had to do that electro neural stuff too which wasn't particularly nice.

At the time I was told there was a good chance i'd lose the two fingers and can only be greatful that they saved them. There's a slght rotation of the middle finger which I can have surgery to correct if I want (like with your leg, they brake it and reset it), but, with that comes the physio and no guarantee of success, so I doubt I will.

The worst part was being told to expect "severe painful arthritus" in the next 10-15 years. 7 years on and they do ache every now and then. Feel the cold!

Hope some sort of solution can be found for your leg mate. Tried cannabis? For medicinal purposes only of course.

MO

 

[themadhippy]

try some natural pain killers from the sativa/indica family of plants :MILD:

 

[MO!]

i'm also on a (approx) 5 year waiting list for a throat operation!

Took me about 3 years to finally see a specialist to tell me i'd be put on the list.

And no, it's not sMOking related. I don't even sMOke ciggies

 

[penance]

MO, sounds like the same boat a bit, the knee flares up every so often, just gets me down when it does. I cant help but feel it should of been sorted by now.

Hippy, tried that and doesnt work for me. TBH it just makes me sit there and think about the pain more

 

[mr cat]

Originally posted by themadhippy
try some natural pain killers from the sativa/indica family of plants :MILD:

I think prevention is better then the cure...I smoke it daily, just in case...

 

[lhatkins]

penance, I sorry to hear of all the trouble you have had, I dont' think there are many people out there who have genuinelly had good experience with the NHS its about time the government put some REAL money into it, oh and sack of the managers and paper pushers!

Those who may have read my thread on the old Groovehandle forum when my wife went into hospital may remember we were trying to sort things out with her, well after 6 trips to her GP they finally decided she should see a specilist, which we saw on Tuesday, he did all sorts of tests, even a heart trace (hum for a shunt problem ok mate whatever!) and he couldn't find a problem, but my wife is still suffering from dizyness and headaches since March of this year, so now we've been put of the list to see her Neurosurgeon, so that'll be another 6 months then. The NHS is a complete JOKE, nothing else for it, all I want them to do is take a poxy MRI scan and see what they find, all the time and money they waste pushing us around would pay for all the scans we need, I'm fed up with the whole system. But what alternative do we have?

My wife can barely climb stairs now, which is why we have to move to a bungalow, due to her health.

So I can understand your feelings penance, I'm pritty peed off with them too!!!

 

[robs]

Sounds like a bad deal Penance, sorry to hear it. For joint problems, 'natural ' remedies oft quoted are Cod Liver Oil & Glucosamine (IIRC).
From personal experience, my father could hardly walk a few hundred yards this time last year due to joint problems (doc said it would be hip replacement time soon enough....old age you know).... despite beiong a complete sceptic he has been on decent doses of cod liver oil for the last year. Yesterday he just got back from a walking holiday in the Alps..it has really done the job for him. It will cost little.

On a lighter note (but a true story), a couple of years ago a work colleague of mine went into our local hospital for an appointment to have his wisdom teeth pulled. They had no record of it. He kicked up a bit. When they looked harder, his appointment was indeed booked, for 365 days later....

That's what we pays our taxes for....