This is Panic 12 – Hospitals and Doctors and Needles, oh my!

The above title came to me as more of a joke than anything else. The writing process for this blog is always a bit of a mish mash of ideas mixed in with trying to provide some sort of commentary on regular events. Having written last time out about having a dental phobia, initially I was a bit wary of going for another health topic so soon but once this title came to me, I knew it was worth trying to have a chat about all this.

Unless you have been living in a black hole (insert Bracknell/Guildford/name of your local hovel here) you won’t have missed the insane array of news on the virus called H1N1, known to us in the Joe Bloggs Brigade as Swine Flu. There’s more and more talk at the moment about the upcoming vaccine that is being produced, how it’s going to be administered, who is first in the cue and will it even work. My initial worry wasn’t any of that; it was more “uh oh, needles”.

I’ve been nervy of needles for ages, as long as I can remember. Going through school every so often you needed those all too crucial immunisations against those variety of diseases like polio and the ever dreaded BCG injection for tuberculosis and I would always go a bit funny looking at needles. I always gone for the tried and tested classic of not looking at it but of course you still know what’s coming and thus I still get really angsty just waiting for the needle to go in. I suppose the issue for me is, and this sounds so daft but it’s true, I don’t like pain. Some people don’t mind it but I hate pain and injections have always hurt me and unnerved me so my natural reaction when faced with one is to panic. Now I know full well that if I go to certain places I may need them and I will suck it up and do it but I will be warning the nurse/healthcare assistant that I am likely to get very agitated.

It got me into thinking about doctors and hospital appointments in general because sometimes they can be really scary places to go. It creates a bit of a crazy cycle where you’re ill and need to be seen but you’re scared of going to the appointment so you don’t get seen so you get more ill meaning the need to be seen increases.

Aside from what opponents of healthcare reform in the USA say, the NHS is there to help us when we are ill and that doesn’t just mean plastering your leg if you break it but with stuff like anxiety, panic, OCD and anything else you care to name.
Doctors, nurses and other healthcare practitioners are incredibly well trained professionals who want to do the best they can to help you with whatever’s wrong. We have a right to be scared but we need to relay that fear to whoever we’re dealing with. Psychic powers don’t come with a medical diploma so if you’re worried about something, tell your GP. If you’re worried about seeing your GP, tell someone and they may go with you.

I was a lot more worried about seeing the doctor when I was little than now. Little me thought that you only went to the doctor if something was really seriously wrong with you. This isn’t the case now of course and the only thing that bothers me at the moment is just having to wait. My GP’s good but he barely ever runs to time bless his cotton socks. Now we’re not always so lucky with our GPs I know but you are within your rights at your surgery to ask to see another doctor or to register elsewhere as long as you’re in the catchment area of that surgery. Don’t shop around though just because you don’t like what you hear! Doctors have a duty to tell you their opinion of the best treatment for you, in my opinion that’s what a good doctor will always do. I’ve disagreed with my doctor before but we reached a compromise on a few things.

There is of course that one step up from the GPs surgery that makes people feel even worse, the hospital.

It’s easy to associate hospitals with bad things. The media seems to leap on any story surrounding a hospital doing something wrong or a management failure of some description and it does little to calm the fears of people let alone people suffering from something like an anxiety condition!

Having worked in a hospital (and not out of choice, due to building works) for about 4 months, I feel somewhat desensitised to it all, apart from the room where they take blood for blood tests which never ceases to creep me out. Hospitals are just a place where people come to get better to me now but I know that I didn’t always feel that way and loads of us don’t.

You go to hospitals for the big things that need sorting. You go to Halfords if you need to buy a bulb for the headlight but you wouldn’t go to them for a new front axel would you? If you’re seeing a consultant then they will have spent years and years training for this. 5 years to be a doctor, then 2-3 years doing general bits then however many years it is to specialise in something, these people will know their stuff. They can’t make the procedures easier to bare physically but they can be honest and let you know the details you need to know and setting your mind at ease as to what might be coming is half the battle.

Being scared is alright, it’s perfectly natural and I’m not saying you should feel no fear because that’s just impossible. If fear however is stopping you from getting seen and more importantly getting better then something needs to be done about it. Whether it be dentist or doctor, we can be sure that the people we’re seeing are the best for the job. If you help them, they will help you.

The title of this blog is obviously a play off of the line in the ever popular film, Wizard of Oz and to an extent some of our fears about things over the last two posts are akin to when Dorothy finally meets The Wizard. What lies behind the curtain is unexpected and scary until we look at what it is we’re faced with which is ultimately less than we thought it was. The truth, sometimes, may be hard to take but it allows us to move on. For me, my anxiety is that curtain. It obscures the things that I know to be true and distorts reality and makes me afraid of things.

We have a bit of the cowardly lion in us all but for those of you who don’t remember the story, he had the courage all along. We all do. It’s that courage that will help us get well as much as anything else.