There’s little virtue in tolerating symptoms
Tolerably #Tolerably
Patients can be concerned about “bothering their doctor”, but there is usually a simple solution and there is no sense in ignoring symptoms which might turn out to be something sinister.
Fortunately, often things progress slowly. Here, the experience of a 77-year-old Wiganer – who has made this a general rule over the years – is most instructive. It all started when, at just 50, he had some difficulty in “getting going” when passing urine probably due, he realised, to an enlarged prostate gland. In the 27 years since, this has become marginally worse, but he has never felt it necessary to consult his doctor about it.
Fifteen years later, by now in his mid-60s, he began to experience mild anginal pain, when walking up the hill to his home. Eventually, he did seek advice but declined the suggestion of further investigations as he found a couple of squirts of the anti-angina medicine glyceryl trinitrate, or GTN, was sufficient to get him up most modest inclines.
Then last year, a routine blood test revealed a rare disorder of the bone marrow, myelodysplastic syndrome, with impaired production of platelets and red and white blood cells. But he feels well enough, and is quite happy to watch and wait to see what happens.
His case is a useful reminder that the natural history of many conditions is for them to progress slowly and tolerably over many years. Still, there seems little virtue in stoically tolerating one’s symptoms when they might so readily be fixed.
There are now half a dozen different simple procedures for restoring a normal flow of urine in those with an enlarged prostate while a coronary angioplasty, to widen blocked or narrowed coronary arteries, readily abolishes those anginal pains.
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