'Physician Heal Thyself'
Or why doctors should not be reluctant to go to their own doctor...
I have been physically unwell for nearly the last month, to a greater or lesser extent (mainly lesser). Mostly viral upper respiratory symptoms - sore throat, occasional coryza (runny nose), occasional mild fevers, sometime headaches, a bit of increased tiredness... and a cough, more on which later.
It has been a damp winter here in Auckland, and there have been a lot of respiratory illnesses going around. I think the original infection came from my wife's work (via my wife), then my son brought his latest gift home from daycare. I had some symptoms, they were a little worse one day, a little better the next, things seemed to be gradually heading to a state of resolution, as the flux of illness progressed. I lost my voice briefly, but I was functional on the whole.
Just a cold - or so I thought!
However, the one persisting symptom, that continued after almost everything was settling was the neverending cough. Dry, hacking, uncontrollable & paroxysmal. Worse in the mornings & colder weather, improved to a degree with patented nostrums (my favourite is Gee's Linctus with the power of morphine & squill!), but never really going away.
I did not feel all that unwell. I was soldiering on at work (as several of the other doctors have been away).
My work mates started to shun me, being reluctant to sit next to me in meetings. Patients looked at me strangely. Ladies from different departments asked me if I was alright in the lunchroom, and offered advice, such as eating more citrus fruit.
I felt quite defensive about things - wasn't I onto my third bottle of Gee's? Wasn't my desk covered in the wrappers of throat lozenges? Wasn't I carrying on at work?
Besides... It was just a lingering cold.
Finally, it was strongly suggested by my boss that I go to my own doctor. Which I did...
Fever, which I didn't even realise I had. Reduced air entry & crepitations (additional breathing noises) at right lung base. Patchy bilateral changes on CXR.
Turned out I had a pneumonia, most likely atypical. Low grade perhaps, but nonetheless a serious infective process. In another era I might already have succumbed to it. Legionnaire's disease is a type of atypical pneumonia, first discovered in 1976, with a mortality rate of 5-30%.
So now I'm on a course of doxycycline (a tetracycline antibiotic), and even after only a couple of days the cough is really starting to improve. I still don't feel all that unwell, but I wonder if that would have been the case if I hadn't made a number of lifestyle changes in the last 6 months, losing over 20kg in weight, and wasn't exercising more & eating more nutritionally.
The whole thing has been a demonstration of the ability of human beings (even doctors, who are trained in diagnosis) to see patterns and form conclusions based on incomplete data, then stick to them no matter what. I think there is also a certain blindness towards recognising these problems in oneself - no one likes to think that they got it wrong.
Perhaps I will be able to listen to the ill-informed rantings of the anti-vaccination crowd with a little more understanding of why they are making such stupid decisions (in my opinion) with a little more understanding. Even though they are completely wrong!
