Today I had my first haematology appointment. I wasn’t looking forward to it after reading some of the posts here. Plus I had to fight my GP to get the referral in the first place. It’s fair to say I wasn’t sure what sort of reception I would receive.
My name was called, the haematologist introduced himself and went on to say B12 was his particular area of speciality, that B12 fascinated him but was regarded as a ‘trivial’ matter by most medical professions, that the pharma companies weren’t interested because there was no money for them in it.
While I’m sitting trying to absorb what I’m hearing, he goes on to say he’s very disappointed in the way my GP has been treating my B12 deficiency. Then we start talking about me.
There’s no problem with my self-injecting though he would like me to self-inject only once a week rather than every 2nd day. However, if my symptoms worsen on the weekly injections I can go back to every 2nd day.
There was a physical exam followed by a lengthy discussion of my medical history, meds, other diagnoses then all finished off by me supplying blood for numerous blood tests. 15 vials they filled For what he described as “B12 specific tests”
This guy was everything I could have hoped for. I left his office feeling as though I had won the lottery, my wife said she could have kissed him.
This was an NHS consultant who knew what he was talking about but, in my opinion, most importantly of all, he listened to his patient, he spoke to his patient, treated his patient as an intelligent individual, was realistic, and aware of, the difficulties facing sufferers in getting a diagnosis and adequate treatment.
It seems there are some NHS consultants out there who are aware of the problems we deal with after all. Hope others are as fortunate as I have been today.