Oddly since yesterday I have had painful knees and today an aching groin. Now I think this is down to the fact that due to the Gabapentin I have been doing more than I have done for awhile and getting further than I normally would.
But this has now aggravated my knees and rather bizarrely the left knee was the most painful which IS odd as when I had trouble before it was mainly my right knee?!
SO I attended this rather nice, private, part of the hospital where the consultants were adorned in rather dashing suits!! This was called the Kings Oak Hospital which had the letters BMI on the signs.
After a wait of an hour, I was there on time, I was called in by someone and we had a chat and he checked me out. He said he did not think my hernia had returned, after he checked my groin and I said and I did not think so either.
When I said that he asked why I was there and I told him about the aching, stabbing pain and the seeping feeling I get and thought I had better mention it to the GP who referred me. I was told to watch out for several things and report them immediately. This is an Inguinal Hernia which can certainly kill you, or should I say WAS an Inguinal Hernia.
I did mention that my groin had been checked a couple of times previously. He also asked me about other areas of pain and I explained the feet, knees, back and shoulder difficulties.
Then I was somewhat confused by two things he then said to me which had me scratching my head somewhat trying to figure out what he meant but it was clear I would be up there again at least twice.
First off he said that he thought that my pains in my groin were down to my OTHER pains and were part and parcel of that, though did NOT say what this was or indeed who decided what it was.
Then he said that to be sure he would send me for an MRI?!
I then asked if the test he did on my groin or looking at it was 'conclusive' and he replied that it was not!
Now on his test he pressed down hard on each side of my groin and asked me to cough. Now this remember is NOT conclusive and the odd part was that this pressing down was not performed previously and they only LOOKED at my groin. I can only think they were looking for signs of Gangrene, lol. I am laughing but do not take the Gangrene as a joke based on my laughter as it IS a factor in strangulated hernias and I only laughed because finding Gangrene instead of checking for the hernia would be .... WELL A BIT BLOODY LATE!!
Any Gangrene is dead rotting flesh and remember it IS in your groin for Inguinal Hernias and gas to be REMOVED! Not an amusing prospect but luckily it is very rare for this to happen. Having this hernia over time and NOT having the operation does increase the risk as time goes by it must be said.
As for the remark that the pain was part and parcel of my 'other pains' I found this to be somewhat an odd thing to say. Now it could just be that I mentioned that the Gabapentin was working and being upped, he asked WHO decided on this and seem to know the Pain Management Doctor, as well as the chap who performed the Hernia Operation. Medicine, it seems, has become a VERY small world lately, lol.
I DID tell him that I had Neurological tests but I KNOW for a fact I did not have them all and that Gabapentin being not only prescribed to me but actually working was somewhat of a double surprise for me.
It could be that he then just assumed it was Psychosomatic, though he did not strike me as being that incompetent, or someone else and therefore in the notes was listed as this.
Me personally I would not and have never considered the pain in my groin to be linked to the rest of my painful areas. After all and as I stated to this Doctor that I still had the piece of paper that clearly states that after the operation I may experience pain in my groin that I MAY have to live with for the rest of my life.
Of course I recorded this meeting and as I rediscovered my tiny old mp3 player I recorded it twice!
As always the recording will be posted at some point but I have to upload it first and then EDIT AN HOUR out of the start of it before converting it, as I do all of them, from the huge WAV file (for audio quality) I record them in into a much compressed mp3 before uploading to one of my Cloud Storage Services.
