The Worried Well, and the Unworried Unwell

Last day of GP - yes, I’m very behind on my blips!

But on any last day I enjoy looking back...thinking on what I’ve seen, what I’ll leave behind, and what I hope to take with me.

No two people who come through the door are the same, but it does fascinate me that a similarity between many of the regular attenders is that they are wonderfully healthy, but highly health-anxious.
I don’t blame them - I think our culture can teach us that pain is unnatural, rather than an expected part of life. We can often medicalise sadness - yet it is an emotion that we need to deal with our grief.
(One of the GPs told me of how when he worked in hospital, a man came in with a black foot - the vascular surgeons diagnosed him as having inoperable necrosis. Turns out he worked on a farm, and his foot was simply black from dirt!)

Not always, but often in a highly consumeristic society, there are expectations for money to be spent and problems to be fixed - and so tests are ordered that were never needed. Which gets to me, when there are places in the world where basic healthcare cannot be afforded. But where do you begin to address such a systemic problem?

And then, there’s the other side - the unworried unwell. The “I didn’t want to bother you doctor, so I didn’t know whether to phone and tell you that my leg is hanging off”. Maybe unworried is the wrong word - but rather, unassuming. Not realising that they are just as worthy as anyone else of receiving care. Who perhaps need reassurance that seeking help is no undignifying thing. That part of being human is to be dependent, whether we recognise that or not.