Anne X

Age at interview: 79

Brief Outline: Anne’s health problems began with atrial fibrillation in her late fifties. By 70 she was taking warfarin and had a pacemaker fitted. She also has Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) and psoriatic arthritis, and links most of her conditions to stress.

Background: Anne is married with three grown-up children and is retired. Ethnic Background: White.

More about me...

Anne believed if she had a pacemaker fitted she would no longer need to take warfarin, but this proved not to be the case. Her first pacemaker had to be removed after three months. She is now on her third. She originally found out that something was wrong with her heart whilst playing badminton. “Gradually the knees got too bad to even try badminton,” following a historical cartilage injury resulting from a skiing accident. Following a lung function test, she was told that she had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD), but there was disagreement between health professionals on the diagnosis as she has never smoked. Anne had experienced further medical confusion about “whether I’ve got glaucoma or not.” She has also had pneumonia. 

Having enjoyed good health until her 50s Anne has found it difficult to come to terms with her health problems, saying she finds them “depressing” and “humiliating.” She says she has changed from somebody who was “blessed with good health” to a situation where she sometime feels “absolutely as if I’m going to die any minute.”  

At the time of the interview, Anne was being kept awake at night by acid reflux linked to stress and not eating regularly. She has psoriatic arthritis in her hands which is painful and “awful” to look at. Psoriasis, as with many of her conditions, is linked to stress. She also experiences a dry mouth following an increase in the dose of one of her medicines. Her experience of ill health is linked to misfortunes that she has faced in the recent past: 

“I’ve … been in two major car accidents in the last three years and my husband also had a heart attack. … my daughter had liver failure … one of my grandchildren shattered her leg.”

Anne is a Christian who has recently moved Parish and doesn’t find much support in her new location. She would like to use acupuncture but has been advised not to because she takes warfarin. Her daughter lives abroad but she’s not able to fly because of her health conditions. She remarks:

“Frankly there are so many things going on in my life, so many unexpected health problems, I am confused myself and wonder what next? So it must be very hard for my GP. So I thank God that I know he’s around somewhere, and I just wish we could be closer that’s all, at this particular time.”

Anne feels embarrassed to go to the doctor. She finds having multiple health conditions depressing and humiliating. She tries to console herself by imagining people worse off.

And, let’s face it, I’ve had so many diverse problems. I mean they’re not your everyday ones, not to have so much arthritis and so much everything. I’m embarrassed, actually, I’m horribly embarrassed to go to the surgery and I think, oh God, they might say, “Oh no, not you again.”

I hate it and my blood pressure must rise most definitely when I go because I don’t like having to tell people my health problems. It really stresses me.

Because I have never taken a tablet in my life. I never even took an aspirin or paracetamol or anything before my heart problem.

And it wasn’t until I had this heart problem, and started to be given tablets that I’ve had medication, although I’ve had the odd tonsillitis, but I’ve been very blessed with my health, and I realise that that I’ve been able to do most of the things I wanted. I’ve renovated old houses, renovated old boats, you name it, I’ve been able to do it. So I’ve been very blessed with reasonable health and to find myself in this sorry state is a bit depressing and, in a way, a bit humiliating as well, if I think about it. I don’t really like it.

Then I’d have to give myself a ticking off and say, “You could have been in a wheelchair since you were born, my girl. You are so very lucky.”

And I have to look at it like that because there isn’t any other way of looking at it, if you think about it, when you see some really sad cases, one’s heart bleeds to see them. People tend to tell me things and I think, “Oh wow, how on earth do they manage? Poor loves.”

And that’s how I feel about it. 

A specialist nurse and a GP disagreed about whether Anne X had COPD or not because she had never smoked, despite an incorrect entry in her medical record that said she had.

But anyway a couple of years ago, at the same time as they did the angiogram, they did a lung test as well.

And it didn’t come up all that well. It said that there was some sort of oh, I don’t know what they called it, but it wasn’t badly not good but the lungs weren’t what they should be, obviously. But I never have been smoker, although somebody wrote, ‘was a smoker’ on a hospital letter, which was nonsense. I’ve never even tried one in my life but it was it was said that I had COPD.

But when I spoke to a top respiratory nurse, for this condition. She said, “In fact, you cannot have COPD if you’ve never smoked.” 

And my doctor said, “Rubbish. You have got COPD.”

Anne X links her poor state of health with stresses from other areas of her life such as being in car accidents and the threat of flooding.

And I’ve got an old injury in my ankle, which isn’t the healthiest of things, that has just reared its ugly head. And I think the stress, I mean my hands are just something to look at, they’re so awful and very painful sometimes. They’ve got psoriatic arthritis.

And that is psoriasis and I’ve got psoriasis in my hair and bits on my body and in my ears, which is a bit of a tedium. So that is stress because I’ve never had psoriasis like this on my body at all.

Ever in my life.

I think it is a stress condition. And we live near a river and suddenly they’ve put on flood warnings, and we’ve had two years of flood warnings at a certain point and water terrifies me. I nearly drowned in a swimming pool up here.

So there’s a lot of stressful things going on in my life. I manage to cope round most of them and take them in my stride as if they didn’t matter but, unfortunately, they do matter and I’ve had a lot of stress in my actual life because I’ve had, been in two major car accidents in the last three years and my husband also had a heart attack.

And my daughter had liver failure. She lives abroad, and one of my grandchildren shattered her leg, and this has all been in the last three years, apart from what’s going on in my life normally.

Anne X is concerned about side effects of prescription drugs and the number of medicines she takes. She prefers to manage with herbal remedies or wait and see if things get better rather than use antibiotics.

And do you find that your GP perhaps understands or offers any support for the anxiety that you experience?

Well my doctor offered a couple of drugs, one of them pregabalin which seemed the lesser of the two evils, but the potential side effects of that even terrified me. So at the moment I am trying Kalms, a herbal remedy that seems to be okay with my drugs. I do find drug taking really hard because I am already on such a bucketful. Since the pneumonia I have had a variety of odd problems. Cystitis five times over a four month period. My finger swelled up, then one of my toes. All sorts of weird things happened for which I declined an antibiotic to see if it would just get better in a couple of days. Most of them did but I had to have yet another antibiotic just before last Christmas, because an old ankle injury suddenly decided to swell my heel and make my ankle a bit angry. It was diagnosed as cellulitis, which I had never heard of before, and my doctor said, “This is serious, you must have antibiotics and now, otherwise you will end up in hospital on a drip.” This is every older person’s nightmare. I don’t know any mature person who is not afraid of going into hospital these days. 

Anne X is concerned about loneliness in older people given the fragmentation of families nowadays.

So I’ve had a very stressful, bad period since I’ve lived here actually and I badly miss a decent parish. I’ve been used to really supportive parish priests and this one, hmm, what can I say.

Didn’t seem to care when my husband had a heart attack. He’s lost an awful lot of parishioners.

And I miss a decent parish life. I’ll be frank with you.

So I love singing, but the voice is a bit grot and I suppose it’s the reflux. I don’t know, and it’s also getting laryngitis a couple of weeks ago but I’m hoping I’ll get it back, but it’s so lovely, it’s such fun to sing. Whether you’re a good singer, doesn’t matter if you’re out of tune, if you enjoy it, just sing and it’s the company. It’s the fun of it all, you know, and it’s meeting other people and having a laugh. It makes such a difference to people so you actually don’t want to talk about the ills, your ailments particularly. You can do that often enough in other places. You don’t really want to use it to relax, which is what we’re really trying to do, because older people can be lonely, because families are not as they were. They’re fragmented. Gone are the days when you lived amongst aunts and uncles and children and etcetera etcetera.

Now there are very few that have all their family. I’ve got one abroad and one quite far in the lower part of England and just one close who’s absolutely wonderful. But, you know, it’s not the same. The trouble is you need you need friends, old friends that you knew years ago. It’s difficult to make friends in a new area, when you’re not young. I’ve got many lovely acquaintances and one very good friend and, unfortunately, she is very ill and is going to move closer to her family. So that’s what you miss and I think that they, if they thought of facilities for things you could do. I mean they had a drop in centre in [name] Street for people who were on their own and for older people or young people, anybody where every day of the week you could get a cup of tea and a biscuit and a chat. But they closed it down, whoever owned it, and I think they’re building places for younger people. Well, you know, younger people don’t have to live right close to all amenities. They’ve got health and feet and it’s good for them to walk, but older people, they’re slow and they don’t want to be a long way from things like that. They’re getting a bit long in the tooth, you know.

You know, and this is what you miss out not having close family ties and units and a decent faith and church. Because the church used to play a huge part in this, certainly did when I grew up, and we’ve come to a really terrible time in history actually of sort of semi-neglect in all sorts of areas.

And that is what they need geeing up on, learn exactly that there’d be less people in the doctors’ and less things wrong with them if they had pursuits that interested them and other people. It’s vital to people. We were not meant to be alone, we’re meant to be in community really. This is what life was supposed to be. We were never supposed to be alone.

In either a family community and then a wider community, but not this solitary business that people have. And I’m lucky, but I feel so very sorry for so many people, because I’m the one who tended to go and have coffee with them from time to time because haven’t seen anyone for days. You know, and there’s something sadly lacking somewhere, when you are so desperate you have to lower your pride and ask someone you barely know if they’ll have a cup of coffee with you, so that they can talk to somebody. And it’s a terrible indictment on society. I’ve stood on my box now and that’s all I’ve got to say on it.

Anne X has to take her own blood test samples in order to know if she needs to take more or less warfarin. She also has to be careful about what she eats.

I’ve got to manage my warfarin and I self-test, I treat myself, in other words. If it’s too high, I’ll give it less warfarin, if it’s too low, I give it more warfarin

So I do need a reasonable diet because, people don’t realise, it plays a huge part in how much vitamin K you get in broccoli and greens and things like that, and what you’re eating plays a huge part. So if I don’t eat and decided to go and have a bowl of cereal, then I know I’m going to have trouble with my warfarin because I’m going to have to test it more often to see what it’s up to, and I don’t want to do that. I don’t mind doing it once a week at the very most, sometimes usually about every ten days, but I don’t really want to be keep doing my warfarin test.

Anne X thinks it would be a “very tall order” for a health professional to be able to view her as a “whole person.” It cannot be easy for them given the number of problems she has.

Do you find that she concentrates on one condition in particular or does she look at your conditions as a whole, or how does that work?

Well, I think it would be difficult to look at me as a whole because only really someone who is holistic as well as a GP would, and it’s a very tall order, you know, to be an expert in the human body and to know just what’s going on and what’s the best way of treating it. If I could, I’d have done herbal herbalism or something.

Not necessarily, not the other one, not acupuncture. That is very, very successful but I can’t have it because of the warfarin.

I think they can only do the best they can. I’m just amazed how much they know, in view of the fact that each area requires a specialist.

To know it fully and you get all these diverse people coming in and you daren’t make drastic mistakes with them, and I’m surprised how much they sort of know. So they can’t and they’ve got to gloss over you. When you’ve got as many problems as I have, it’s probably very difficult, I’m not an easy person because I don’t really want a test unless I really need one, particularly a TOE, which scares the pants off me, because I had a very awful one the first time.

Anne X recommends that people try singing and laughing therapy. Such groups can also help get around social isolation as more people live away from their families.

I would suggest they got down to this singing thing and there’s a laughter workshop that I know that the Chinese absolutely value, they all mass in the parks because they’ve just found that people work better and that they feel good and productivity is greater. And this is because when you laugh, it doesn’t matter whether it’s put on with a ha ha, it still apparently affects the endorphins.

Which is a feel good thing and, therefore, it affects, and it helps the breathing. You’ve got to breathe properly if you laugh and, in the end, it’s quite amusing. I tried it and I could actually look at myself in the mirror and laugh, well, who wouldn’t? Do you know what I mean?

[Laughs]

Real laugh at myself, and [husband’s name] and I have tried it and it is such fun. It’s so liberating. And so this is the same with singing, because I’ve always been a singer. I was always a cantor in the church where I lived before [county].

So I love singing, but the voice is a bit grot and I suppose it’s the reflux. I don’t know, and it’s also getting laryngitis a couple of weeks ago but I’m hoping I’ll get it back, but it’s so lovely, it’s such fun to sing. Whether you’re a good singer, doesn’t matter if you’re out of tune, if you enjoy it, just sing and it’s the company. It’s the fun of it all, you know, and it’s meeting other people and having a laugh. It makes such a difference to people so you actually don’t want to talk about the ills, your ailments particularly. You can do that often enough in other places. You don’t really want to use it to relax, which is what we’re really trying to do, because older people can be lonely, because families are not as they were. They’re fragmented. Gone are the days when you lived amongst aunts and uncles and children and etcetera etcetera.