My doctor, who wasn't my normal doctor he was just a practice doctor just said to me take Ibufen and go away basically. And that was in the January and then by May my knees were swelling, my hands were really swollen and I could hardly walk on the bottom of my feet. So I went back to my GP, but my normal doctor, and she done blood tests and all the tests that you could do and she was pretty sure it was some sort of arthritis but she didn't know what it was. And where I work you get private health care so I decided to go and see a private specialist and when I got to see him, when I was 15 I had, I'd don't' know if I'm going to say this right but it's psoriatic arthritis and he said it was that.
And so I started reading and my joints were not the same as psoriatic arthritis. And I got it in my head that I thought it was RA and I kept saying it to this doctor and he kept saying 'No, it's not that'. And he said, 'We've done a blood test and it says negative'. But then when I was reading it was saying that your blood can be negative for 3 years. So in the end I went back to my original doctor and I said what I thought and she was the one who said the mineral clinic are a good hospital and she referred me to them.
So that was, I first noticed I had problems in January '99 and I didn't get referred to them until July 2000, so I'd had a year and a half.
Well, like I said, the first GP wasn't understanding but then when I seen my second GP and this was my proper GP and she suggested, I suggested to her what I was going to do and she said that she thought it was a good idea. But it was basically me going to her and saying, because they couldn't find nothing wrong. But I just thought, they were pretty sure it some sort of arthritis so I thought if I go to someone who actually specialises in that then they might be able to find out what the problem was.
And what made you change from that consultant to an NHS one?
Because he kept saying it was psoriatic and I kept saying it wasn't. And he wouldn't do any more tests or look into it further, he just stuck to his guns on it and I just, I just had that feeling it wasn't what he was saying. So then I went back to my GP and I told her what I thought and she said, that's when she referred me to the clinic I'm at now because she said they were very good with people with arthritis.
And did you have to wait for that a long time?
No. I think I was possibly, may, it might have been about a month to 6 weeks that I had to wait but as soon as I went to see the consultant within a month I knew what was the matter. |
