YOUR HEALTH Dr James Le Fanu: 23 August
My generation is rapidly approaching the time of life when things start to go wrong and increasingly I nd myself on the phone talking friends through the ins and outs of bypass grafts, joint replacements, prostate operations and similar excitements. It is always a pleasure to see them sometime later looking t, an opportunity to re ect on how many of these treatments were pioneered and developed within our lifetime.
Probably the most remarkable of the medical innovations of the post-war years remains organ transplantation. This seemed for many years to be an experimental therapy too far as none of those in whom it was attempted survived.
In the early 1960s the physician in charge of the world’s leading kidney transplant centre in Boston Massachusetts resigned on the grounds that he had ‘o ciated at enough murders’. And yet seemingly against all the odds, transplantation came right in the end to become one of the most successful of modern medical treatments.
It is also special in a di erent way, for it touches on the deepest of emotions – love, grief, altruism and the ‘silver lining of sorrow’ that can lead to happiness. How, a friend recently enquired, should he, as the recipient of the liver of a teenage girl, thank the family whose daughter’s tragic death had just saved his life?
The simple answer, of course, is that you don’t. It is all too di cult and emotional and most no doubt would prefer the bene ciaries of their most personal misfortune should remain unknown to them. But those who wish can make contact, as described by retired Edinburgh paediatrician Dr William Cutting.
In 1988 when on a family holiday his daughter Catriona’s husband was knocked o his bicycle by a passing car. He sustained serious head injuries but survived just long enough for his four children to say goodbye to him.
Eighteen months later, Catriona received a letter from a 50-year-old Londonderry man called Gerry who ran a thriving construction business. He told her he su ered from the lung condition brosing alveolitis of such severity he was ‘too breathless even to bend down and do up my shoelaces’. His lung transplant had arrived just in time and allowed him to resume a full and active life – for which he wished to express to her his ‘profound thanks’.
Six months later on the second anniversary of the fatal accident the families met, ‘united by a still living lung that had rich associations of the past, continuing vitality in the present and a symbol of hope for the future’.
‘We ate, talked, laughed and walked the beaches of Donegal together,’ writes Dr Cutting, ‘and Gerry kicked a football around the garden with our grandson Tommy.’
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from Leeds for whom the onset of warmer weather is invariably accompanied by a persistent pain from the upper neck to the base of the skull. ‘I experience it most severely on a summer holiday,’ she writes. She says that applying an ice pack brings relief but she ‘can scarcely walk around with one the whole time’. Might there be, she wonders, a more practical remedy? This is most puzzling. The most likely explanation is that the warm weather caused the relaxation of the muscles running up and down the neck, putting pressure on a nerve as it exits the spine. This is best treated with some form of manipulation by an osteopath or chiropractor.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk
Probably the most remarkable of the medical innovations of the post-war years remains organ transplantation. This seemed for many years to be an experimental therapy too far as none of those in whom it was attempted survived.
In the early 1960s the physician in charge of the world’s leading kidney transplant centre in Boston Massachusetts resigned on the grounds that he had ‘o ciated at enough murders’. And yet seemingly against all the odds, transplantation came right in the end to become one of the most successful of modern medical treatments.
It is also special in a di erent way, for it touches on the deepest of emotions – love, grief, altruism and the ‘silver lining of sorrow’ that can lead to happiness. How, a friend recently enquired, should he, as the recipient of the liver of a teenage girl, thank the family whose daughter’s tragic death had just saved his life?
The simple answer, of course, is that you don’t. It is all too di cult and emotional and most no doubt would prefer the bene ciaries of their most personal misfortune should remain unknown to them. But those who wish can make contact, as described by retired Edinburgh paediatrician Dr William Cutting.
In 1988 when on a family holiday his daughter Catriona’s husband was knocked o his bicycle by a passing car. He sustained serious head injuries but survived just long enough for his four children to say goodbye to him.
Eighteen months later, Catriona received a letter from a 50-year-old Londonderry man called Gerry who ran a thriving construction business. He told her he su ered from the lung condition brosing alveolitis of such severity he was ‘too breathless even to bend down and do up my shoelaces’. His lung transplant had arrived just in time and allowed him to resume a full and active life – for which he wished to express to her his ‘profound thanks’.
Six months later on the second anniversary of the fatal accident the families met, ‘united by a still living lung that had rich associations of the past, continuing vitality in the present and a symbol of hope for the future’.
‘We ate, talked, laughed and walked the beaches of Donegal together,’ writes Dr Cutting, ‘and Gerry kicked a football around the garden with our grandson Tommy.’
This week’s medical query comes courtesy of a lady from Leeds for whom the onset of warmer weather is invariably accompanied by a persistent pain from the upper neck to the base of the skull. ‘I experience it most severely on a summer holiday,’ she writes. She says that applying an ice pack brings relief but she ‘can scarcely walk around with one the whole time’. Might there be, she wonders, a more practical remedy? This is most puzzling. The most likely explanation is that the warm weather caused the relaxation of the muscles running up and down the neck, putting pressure on a nerve as it exits the spine. This is best treated with some form of manipulation by an osteopath or chiropractor.
Email drjames@lady.co.uk