The Art of Diagnosis.

Twenty years ago we used to buy books like this one. Nowadays for many folk a new symptom leads them straight to Google. Doctors dislike it and in many ways they are right to do so. But it is a human attribute to want to know these things.

Knottman is reminded of this because two years ago his optician told him he was developing double vision. It was partly corrected with new glasses. Then eighteen months ago K visited his GP because his left eyelid started drooping on a random basis. Some of the lovely ladies in the village thought he was winking at them. Which was OK but he had reached the age at which he was terrified if they winked back.
Now here is the bit you will find hard to believe. After ten hospital visits to four different hospitals, six high powered consultants, an MRI scan, a neurophysiology test using electric currents, Knottman finally has a diagnosis. For those interested he has Ocular Myasthenia Gravis. NO SYMPATHY PLEASE. It has never been painful, I can drive with a pirate patch over one eye and reading and blipping have been no problem.

And I have really done very well. After all when I developed adult onset Hydrocephalus in the 1990s it took four years to get a diagnosis.

So today my Consultant has told my GP what pills to give me which it seems may make the symptoms allbut disappear.

So prescription in hand I rush down to the pharmacy on the Promenade with view to starting the treatment this weekend. Only to find that the pills are so rare that they will not be here until Monday.

C'est la vie. Why can't I get something simple like backache? Come to think of it that gardening yesterday didn't do me much good.