Why doctors hate skiing injuries Dr Copperfield: inside the mind of an Essex GP Skiing injuries are so annoying. Not for you, hobbling hotfoot from the airport into my emergency surgery with your panda-eyed tan. No, for us GPs. Because, clearly, you can afford more expensive holidays than I can.
As well as that, there is the implication that you're younger and fitter, at least you were until most of your body went one way and your knee the other.
So popular are quickie skiing holidays and so high the risk of injury that for ``short break'' read ``loud snap''. Or, to use the British Orthopaedics Sports Trauma Association's official label for ill-prepared, crock-kneed skiers: half-term syndrome.
Not that this is the only medical syndrome resulting from ever-increasing opportunities to travel. Fever, diarrhoea, cough, rash and sexual souvenirs in returning holidaymakers are all familiar to GPs, and certainly widen the diagnostic scope beyond something you might pick up from a kebab van in Basildon. But now that globetrotting is de rigueur, we GPs are constantly faced with various travel-related scenarios, all with snappy names.
In the mundane category is swimmer's ear. Take one lug-hole, submerge in dodgy swimming-pool water and marinade in baking temperatures for a few hours.
Voila! A discharging ear which itches like stink. And may, indeed, stink. This does little for your hearing or your holiday romance, but it won't kill you.
Whereas holiday heart just might. This comprises full-board fuelled alcoholic binges that make the heart beat with all the coordination of two ferrets in a sack. That's atrial fibrillation, if you want to get technical.
The effects range from palpitations, through breathlessness and dizziness, to an unscheduled two-centre aspect to your holiday - the second location being whatever ``intensive treatment unit'' is in Spanish because you have suffered heart failure or a stroke.
Along with these genuine syndromes are a number of media constructs designed to reflect our busy lives and fill feature pages. Hence, ``left it too late syndrome'', which means you're grumpy because you couldn't get the hotel in Mauritius you really wanted, and I'm even grumpier because it's last thing on a Friday and you've given me ten minutes to devise a vaccination schedule that normally requires a month.
Then there's ``holiday e-mail e-stress syndrome''. This describes the tension state caused by people continuing to e-mail you via your BlackBerry while you're away. Particularly when one of them is your GP exacting revenge by saying: ``By the way, I forgot to give you a hepatitis A jab.''
Finally, there's ``postholiday depression syndrome'', which does what it says on the tin. Not that any sort of postholiday comedown could have you feeling more depressed than I am when encountering the worst holiday scenario of all - ``could it be Lyme disease?'' syndrome.
Lyme disease is a genuine illness transmitted by a tick bite, classically suffered by hikers in North America, which is perhaps why they go everywhere by car. It causes all sorts of symptoms, some of them serious if untreated. But as a tick bite is hard to confirm, the symptoms can be vague, tests are often inconclusive, specialists can't agree on the diagnostic criteria and there's no great consensus over treatment. It's manna from heaven for those who feel a bit iffy and want to torture their doctors. Chronic fatigue syndrome with hiking boots, in other words.
I can cope with all other holiday syndromes, but not this one. So, could it be Lyme disease? Maybe. Let's run some tests. Then book an appointment for next week, when I'll be off skiing.
Dr Copperfield is an Essex GP. He also writes for DoctorPortal.co.uk
Posts: 2824 | From The Back of Beyond | Registered: Oct 2003
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it confirms my idea that a lot of doctors don't think of their patients as equal human beings with problems, but as whiny idiots that like to collect illnesses...
they have no idea how much grief they cause
Posts: 13 | From netherlands | Registered: Jan 2008
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dontlikeliver
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 4749
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Yes, it's a form of bullying I'd say.
Posts: 2824 | From The Back of Beyond | Registered: Oct 2003
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Truthfinder
Frequent Contributor (1K+ posts)
Member # 8512
posted
Hmmmmpf.
Although, I did get a kick out of this comment:
***"This comprises full-board fuelled alcoholic binges that make the heart beat with all the coordination of two ferrets in a sack."***
-------------------- Tracy .... Prayers for the Lyme Community - every day at 6 p.m. Pacific Time and 9 p.m. Eastern Time � just take a few moments to say a prayer wherever you are�. Posts: 2966 | From Colorado | Registered: Dec 2005
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