So, now my other knee is showing the same symptoms as the first one. I now have two malfunctioning knees. First the left, now the right. Isn’t that just dandy?

Just like when I first started have problems with the left, the right knee now feels very hot to me, especially after moving, and when I palpate the knee (aka give it a squeeze), it feels squishy and puffy, like there is fluid under the skin.

So, you know… WTF?

By this point, the left knee has… stabilized. It doesn’t heat up nearly as much as it did before, and it doesn’t hurt as much to move it as it once did.

But it’s still not healthy. I have to be careful how I put weight on it because any side-to-side twisting causes pain of a very worrying sort. And I still have that surface muscular paralysis that makes it feel like there’s a cast or a bandage wrapped around my left leg, between the top of the kneecap to around mid-calf.

If the same thing was to happen to the right leg as well, it would definitely make it hard to walk. Right now, I have a bit of a limp, but for the most part, the right leg compensates for the left.

That might be part of the problem, come to think of it. The right leg being overloaded now.

Anyhow, if both of them were stiff and unstable, at the very least I would be walking funny. At the worst, I would not be able to walk correctly without some kind of assistance, like crutches or braces.

That would suck. I might not be the most active of guys, in fact I am probably about as indolent as one can be without being in a coma. There are invalids in hospitals who get more exercise than me because they at least are made to do physio.

But I still enjoy the ability to walk. The alternatives are so much less efficient and, frankly, a lot more work. I have spent some time on crutches and they are a nightmare of a hassle to deal with. They are bulky and awkward and clumsy to use, and they put a lot of strain on your arms, and especially your underarms, which are, after all, now bearing your weight.

I have never had braces on my legs, but they do not look like fun either. And they usually come with crutches.

So needless to say (but I will anyway), I am getting pretty worried. Clearly something is attacking my knees and possibly other joints as well, and so far, medical science doesn’t know what. My GP couldn’t figure it out (typical, in my experience) and has supposedly referred me to a rheumotologist (sp?), but that was weeks ago now and I still haven’t heard anything.

So I might just have to dial myself up another GP appointment and go back to see Doctor Chao and remind him that he has not actually diagnosed my problem yet, let alone solved it.

I think it is unfair to make patients have to come back over and over again and advocate so hard for themselves just to keep the doctor’s attention long enough to get your problem actually treated. I should not feel like I need to have a lawyer or an advocate just to get treatment. The assembly-line approach to primary health care of today is great for making sure you can get an appointment within a couple of days, but it does a poor job with anything that can’t be solved in 15 minutes or less with a quick procedure or a hastily dashed off prescription.

All my life, I have had a strange relationship with doctors. I don’t know if it’s the perversity of fate or the perversity of how I express myself, but I always seem to end up with these sorts of problems that defy simply solutions and that therefore require the kind of focused attention and follow-through that you just can’t get from today’s general practitioners.

The fact that I have a history of being too timid and agreeable to properly advocate for myself only makes the problem worse. The very medical conditions (social anxiety, depression) that a GP first diagnosed in me are the precise reason why I cannot properly advocate for myself in the first place.

But life is pretty harsh for people whose medical conditions make it hard to seek treatment. I am not sure what could be done about that. Maybe some sort of medical advocate outreach program. Something where I would only have to have the gumption to call and make contact once, and then an advocate would take it from there.

Hell, for all I know, that’s already out there, just waiting for my call. How would I know?

Luckily, thanks to the ministrations of a competent medical professional in the form of my therapist Doctor Costin, I am recovering from my mental illness and I am therefore considerably less timid and self-minimizing than before. This opens the door to a more robust and assertive level of self-advocacy.

But it will always seem wrong to me to have a medical system where you have to practically shout at your GP in order to keep their attention long enough to actually be treated for things. It certainly fails to make me feel like my doctor is on my side or that he or she knows me well enough to treat me as a person and not just today’s list of symptoms.

Maybe the information age is partly to blame. There is a lot of information attached to every patient now, and it would take some kind of mnemonic genius to remember it all for dozens of patients.

But there has to be some way to make the whole thing a little more gentle and humane.

I guess doubling the number of doctors would do it. But that’s kind of hard to arrange. People either choose to become doctors or they don’t, and nothing society can do can do much to change that.

Oh well. I will hobble to the keyboard to talk to you again tomorrow, folks!