Female Specific Medicine

Watching Mylene:Miscarriage and Me on the BBC tonight is cutting me deeply. The following is deeply personal but I think my story and those of many more women needs to be heard.

I was in hospital for the third time for investigation into continuous bleeding in my forties (2x 18 months of being told to wait a bit longer to see if it stops by itself by numerous GPs). The female gynaecologist came to see me after the surgery to say they still didn’t know what was causing it. She then added that I have a very rare birth defect that would mean I’d never carry a child to term and that it wasn’t suitable for resectioning. She then walked away. That was it. No follow up for me to ask questions. No sympathy (my notes stated I wanted to avoid a hysterectomy as I hadn’t given up on wanting a child). No counselling. No explanation as to why the previous two male gynaecologists hadn’t told me. 

To this day, I still have no diagnosis, am still listening to consultants guessing as to the cause of the bleeding and speculating that it shouldn’t re start once I have my existing Mirena IUS removed as I’m now post menopausal (now in my 60s). I’d heard the same when I ended up having emergency investigative surgery during COVID lock down two for further bleeding. I was a year overdue having the IUS replaced thanks to GPs ignoring the advice of not one but four consultant gynaecologists. Conclusion? The implant had run out of progesterone. No **** Sherlock! 

‘Treatments’ leading to use of the Mirena are best described as medieval. 

I’m currently waiting for day surgery to remove my current IUS with no intent to replace it and yet another consultant talking about hysterectomy like it was having your toenails cut.

So here I am, just another statistic on how truly appalling female specific medicine and research is. 

Bite Back

Is there anything funnier than accidentally using human toothpaste when cleaning your cat’s teeth? Well yes, it turns out there is: watching your partner using the malt flavoured cat paste 😈

Covent Garden

My maternal grandfather was a horticulturist and, as such, had a commercial attachment with Covent Garden’s flower market, particularly for his roses.

Decades later, my mum and I enjoyed many days out in the square. There was a particular bistro in one of the former storage cellars we particularly liked. We’d eat listening to the conversations of others and often to music wafting in from a street artist.

The covered market was a treasure house of clothing, jewellery and ornamentation. Then the tiny shops including finding Lush by following our noses, long before Reading had a branch.

Covent Garden tube station is an experience in its own right. Arriving on the platform gives no sense of the ascent to come. We never did brave the stairs with their warning upon the number of steps, using instead the lifts with their trellised safety doors.

The mural painted on the Royal Opera House never went unremarked. 

Later still, a memorable night out with friends involving home made cake in an unusual book and art shop.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0d4s5dm

Truss-t Me

Truss-t me, I have a plan

No financier e’er scanned

Albion’s bankers weep

In envy, such its bang.

Truss-t me, market falls

Like failed rafters,

Expected pro tem,

Will yet ring stock bells

Truss-t me, I have a plan

To save my own skin,

A sacrificial chicken

Make my loyal liege man

Fiona Wilson 

14/10/2022

Pocket Story

It was a dreich day, yet it drew me outside. I pierced the sodden air, listening to the soft susurration of my hosiery and inhaling the petrichor. It was a good day to be alive.  

Mental Health Testimony

I’ve had bouts of anxiety and depression since my teens. I’m what’s called a functioning depressive which means that most of the time you’d never know.

Since breaking my spine, you can add in panic attacks relating to any and every thing medically related including just sitting in the waiting room of the vet. This is not necessarily the classic hyperventilating. Mostly it is waves of increasing anxiety and fear. It can make me impatient (okay smart arses, more so 😂), unable to focus properly on what you’re saying to me, and irrational. A bit like PMT on steroids. 

If you see me self neglecting or self harming with food then I’m already in depressive crisis. If I appear hyperactive and a little manic, my anxiety is spiralling. After a bout of that, I crash and go to ground. A bad attack, say from dental treatment, leaves me depleted for days.

That friend who’s the life and soul of the party might be breaking inside. The one who’s thoughtful and quiet might be scared. It’s not about doing things for them or fixing them, it’s simply looking them in the eye and asking “are you okay?” and making sure “fine” really is fine.

NHS Penalty Fees

There have been calls recently for people failing to show for NHS appointments to be fined. As the only sector with a history of charging something toward the cost of treatment and for fining no shows is NHS Dentistry, this would mean creating processes and supporting IT throughout the rest of the NHS. The NHS generally is operating on ancient kit and software. 

People are resistant to change. Most find it scary. It’s a core tenant of change management therefore, that you sell change by making the benefit personal to the people you want to change behaviour. 

I suggested to an NHS research group some time ago that just saying how many missed appointments in each GP practise was pretty meaningless to most people. If they reframed it to say “There were x missed appointments in the last month. This means you’ve had to wait an extra x days for your appointment”, peer pressure would do the rest without them spending a penny on a cure. 

Similarly, they ought to print the cost of consultant and clinic appointments on letters and drug costs on prescriptions. 

You don’t have to pay to create an actual penalty fee system in order to get folk to value what they get with the NHS and to think about how their habits affect services. 

Note here that government IT projects are notorious for spiralling costs and time over runs.

I’ve recently noticed that some of the correspondence for my own appointments are now doing this so some within the NHS agree with me.

Activating peer pressure may well be quicker and cheaper than fining folk ultimately.