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It's a quirk of the language that the question "How are you?" doesn't often want a real answer - you're supposed to say "fine" or "mustn't grumble", whatever the truth is. This kind of stiff-upper-lip mentality sometimes leads us to tell ourselves we're fine when this is not true.
The current series of the X Factor saw one good example of this, when contestant Jacqui Gray, from Sunderland, began singing for the judges. Simon Cowell, despite his fearsome reputation, was concerned about the peculiar quality of her voice, and advised her to visit a doctor. The following day, she did so, where it turned out that the strange rasp that she had been ignoring was a symptom of the lung disease bronchiectasis. Fortunately for her, the disease was caught in time, but without her audition for X Factor, she would have continued to ignore the symptoms.
The Daily Mail quoted her as saying "I advise anyone who suffers from constant bad chests and illness to get it checked out immediately." While this is good advice for any prolonged or unusual sickness, it is very easy to be negligent regarding our own symptoms - we tell ourselves that the symptoms will clear up on their own, that we'll get to it when work quietens down, that it's probably nothing, that it's too embarrassing to bring up with a doctor, or any number of further excuses.
What Gray's example shows, though, is how bad an idea this is; without this diagnosis, her bronchiectasis would not have been caught in time. RSI, or repetitive strain injury, is another work-related injury that is often ignored by its sufferers, when an early diagnosis can reduce the treatment time exponentially. For these reasons, it's clearly a good idea to take your symptoms to a doctor as soon as possible.
Far worse, of course, is medical negligence, where a doctor manages to make the wrong diagnosis by ignoring your symptoms. We often hear stories in the news of this happening; fortunately, the reason it makes the news is that it is not common in the UK. When it does happen, however, the effects can be highly traumatic. Someone wrongly told they are free of cancer can see their chances of it being cured drop dramatically in the time before the disease is correctly diagnosed. On the other hand, someone wrongly told they do have cancer is forced to deal with emotional trauma unnecessarily, and may be subjected to painful treatments that were not needed. Either way, the results are dreadful for the victim.
What we can do to minimise the chances of this happening is to be very clear about any symptoms we have, to leave the attitude that we "mustn't grumble" behind, even if this feels unnatural. If it's you that has the symptoms, it is you that needs to be satisfied that the doctor has paid sufficient attention to those symptoms.
That attitude can also be left behind if we are unlucky enough to be one of the few who do end up on the wrong end of medical negligence. The NHS, in fact, encourages this by offering a complaints procedure, but if this does not lead to a satisfactory conclusion, it is possible to make a compensation claim for medical negligence.
Venturing into the process of launching a medical negligence compensation claim can sound scary, but there are companies, such as YouClaim, prepared to help you guide this complex process to a successful conclusion. Here again, it is important to remember that being clear about your complaints is not grumbling, but honesty.
If this seems to be turning into a plea for more honesty in the world, that may be because it is. That's no bad thing in general, especially if we can avoid the brutal honesty that Simon Cowell tends to use. In terms of our health, it is clearly vital.
This article may be published on another website free of charge, on the condition that a link is provided from this article to our website: http://www.youclaim.co.uk/medical-negligence-lung-cancer.htm
