Dear LPG readers, 

I have a friend who gets to see their GP more than most, and there is nothing particularly unusual about that apart from the fact that most of us have to make do with telephone appointments these days.    

I have to say that, the friend I am talking about and I, first met at a club for older people, not long after we each retired, and we became what I call one-to-one friends during the pandemic when the only real way to get to know each other was ‘distantly’.  Our regular chats have now stopped exclusively happening through the phone lines and broadband airways and, in spite of the fact that we still attend the club (which we are so thankful to be able to do because it survived being shut down for all that time), we also still meet regularly on days when it is not open.   

As ever we met up after her consultation and, as usual, and she went into quite a bit of detail about what had happened when she got to her appointment.  Thankfully, this time, it was nothing too serious and she felt that the Doctor had spent more time than usual telling her what was wrong, although there was one aspect of her consultation that she was disappointed with.  She told me that the outcome of her symptoms left the doctor with no officially recognisable name for her latest medical condition.   

I have to say that the subject of her health always overshadows most of our chats, and this latest re-evaluation seemed to leave her feeling both worried and a little special because there seems to be a name for nearly every condition these days.  

I am glad that she feels that she can confide in me but, her fixation on her health had me asking a few rhetorical questions after that particular chat. 

I have a theory that while it is good to know that so much research is being done throughout the world, the fact that not every illness can be slotted into its own individual category- box is just one reminder that we are each unique and there will always be a need for medical research.   I also know that getting old comes with its added aches, pains, ailments and medications, and it is so good to have a friend which you feel that you can tell anything to.   She is not the only one either, I recognise that I can go on and on too.  I often focus on things that others have done that annoy me, which I suspect can be annoying for her, but I would never show her that I am a bit fed up of hearing about her obsession with her health.  It was getting that way until I realised that perhaps she is talking about it so much because she is genuinely living with all these thoughts continually. 


I decided that there had to be more that I could do than just saying, ‘Mmmm ‘and ‘Yes’ repeatedly in the appropriate gaps between her words, and it lead me to wonder if she is a bit of a hypochondriac, so I took a look on line to see if there was something else that I could do to help.  

I am old enough to remember a time when stressing about any particular topic too often would have been something you just stopped doing if you wanted to keep your friends, but the first thing that the internet taught me is that seriously worrying about your health too much is now thought of as an illness rather than a somewhat boring personality trait.  One of the hardest things to do was trying to explain to my friend that I thought she might be suffering from it.    

It is often the case that the people around you are likely to see what is happening more clearly than yourself and although your friends can sometimes be absolutely wrong, every avenue is worth exploring.   

EA, Bellingham 

 

 

 

EA offers some information about the symptoms…

 

 

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… and how can be done about it… 

 

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