PART 9: A Side Story
Last time, I promised you a side story. In Part 1: The Early Signs, I mentioned that Sheila had been under the care of the country's leading IBS specialist for several years.
Before Christmas last year, I wrote to his team to ask whether they considered Sheila's symptoms at the time could have been caused by a villous adenoma, rather than by her IBS, just to close off those niggling concerns.
Here's what I wrote:
Six weeks later, I got a response:
Now, whilst we would take issue with exactly how stable Sheila was and how that related to how bad she was when she first presented to the professor, we do think he has responded better to my questions than The Christie ever has. At least, whilst taking no blame (OBVS), he hasn't just stuck his fingers in his ears and gone la-la-la, go away. We hope that lessons learnt from Sheila's case will mean less chance of IBS sufferers under his team, having their symptoms being taken as IBS without greater consideration of other causes in future.
However, Sheila has recently said that she doesn't want to think too much about how an opportunity to investigate earlier may have been missed because when she does, she gets really upset. Her symptoms were definitely worse than they were in 2009 and she had her medication changed because her diarrhoea was worse than it had been (I'm not sure how that translates to being stable and loose bowels were unchanged and was doing reasonably well - were they just trying to get them off their books because the professor was retiring perhaps? - not that I'm cynical or anything!). Sheila had been put on a crap diet by that team as well - low fibre, white processed everything, hardly any fruit or veg etc, etc for all those years and everyone knows that kind of diet can raise the chances of succumbing to colon cancer - shouldn't that in itself mean IBS sufferers on a crap diet, should get regular colonoscopies, particularly if polyps are asymptomatic?
I'm not sure just now, whether to push this line further. I'm still pushing the TDM thing along and I will come back to the latest progress on that in the near future. One thing at once perhaps.
Here's what I wrote:
Six weeks later, I got a response:
Now, whilst we would take issue with exactly how stable Sheila was and how that related to how bad she was when she first presented to the professor, we do think he has responded better to my questions than The Christie ever has. At least, whilst taking no blame (OBVS), he hasn't just stuck his fingers in his ears and gone la-la-la, go away. We hope that lessons learnt from Sheila's case will mean less chance of IBS sufferers under his team, having their symptoms being taken as IBS without greater consideration of other causes in future.
However, Sheila has recently said that she doesn't want to think too much about how an opportunity to investigate earlier may have been missed because when she does, she gets really upset. Her symptoms were definitely worse than they were in 2009 and she had her medication changed because her diarrhoea was worse than it had been (I'm not sure how that translates to being stable and loose bowels were unchanged and was doing reasonably well - were they just trying to get them off their books because the professor was retiring perhaps? - not that I'm cynical or anything!). Sheila had been put on a crap diet by that team as well - low fibre, white processed everything, hardly any fruit or veg etc, etc for all those years and everyone knows that kind of diet can raise the chances of succumbing to colon cancer - shouldn't that in itself mean IBS sufferers on a crap diet, should get regular colonoscopies, particularly if polyps are asymptomatic?
I'm not sure just now, whether to push this line further. I'm still pushing the TDM thing along and I will come back to the latest progress on that in the near future. One thing at once perhaps.
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