That evening, I clamber desperately into bed, my cold not feeling an iota better. At least Lizzie has stopped mocking me.
My dry cough has gotten worse. It’s from my throat, not my chest, so on the plus side that suggests it isn’t Covid (and I’ve continued to test negative for that).
I cough, heavingly, as I try to go to sleep… and I suddenly remember the enormous bronchitic coughs my father used to do in the last half-decade or so of his life.
They were massive, gasping hacks… which (unlike my current cough) came from deep inside his lungs and felt sometimes like they would never end. It was like watching someone from Victorian times slowly expire from tuberculosis.
I remember, at the time, perhaps not being as sympathetic as I could have been to his condition. On one hand, I was a slightly sullen, sulky teenaged boy – so sympathy or empathy or any other ‘-thy’ were not really my cup of tea (or cup of ‘-thy’) .
And, on the other hand, my Dad was a heavy smoker all his life. And I guess I just thought… that’s what heavy smokers sound like.
Of course, as I now try to go to sleep (hoarsely kaff–kaff–kaffing away), I suddenly think – were those terrible coughs of my father’s actually symptoms of his cancer? After all, his lungs were riddled with tumours by the time he was finally diagnosed.
It becomes clear to me. Yes, they probably were symptoms. And nobody thought at the time… might not this man be seriously ill?
In the end, my father began to get serious pains in his back. He went to the doctor, who concluded Dad was suffering from ‘lumbago’ (the fancy term for lower back pain), but nothing more than lumbago.
Boy, did that doctor get it wrong! In the end, my mother insisted Dad keep on returning to the doctor until he was given a proper diagnosis. Which Dad eventually got… it was terminal cancer. He died a couple of months later, in his mid sixties.
Although it’s half turned off (as I drift off to sleep) my brain now decides to tackle the weighty issue of medical misdiagnosis. Of course, I don’t think my cough is anything other than a cough (I clearly just have a cold). But how many people, who do have serious conditions, are misdiagnosed by doctors? Like Dad?
Don’t get me wrong. I’m a big fan of doctors in general. Clap for the NHS and all that – I was out on our village street doing it! But it’s not just Dad’s cancer which was misdiagnosed. More recently, of course, it was Lizzie’s – who went to the doctor for months, with abdomen pains, and was told a Mirena coil was the answer. Boy, did that doctor get it wrong.
I’m not going to get into the consequences of Lizzie’s misdiagnosis here, what might have been avoided if it hadn’t happened. It’s just too big a subject. And, besides, it’s at this point… musing on the subject of misdiagnosis…. Lizzie’s misdiagnosis… and the millions of other people presumably in the same boat… it’s at this point, that I finally fall asleep.
P. D. Clifton 
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