[Acrylic-bob]

In the spring I went to the GP complaing of pain in both shoulders and my neck. he sent me off for xrays. they only xrayed one shoulder and came back ten days later with a diagnosis of Osteo-arthritis. Boo hoo for me. So the gp said that the best course would be to try Physiotherapy first, then medication, then if all else failed we would have to consider surgery - double boo hoo for me. while waiting for the appointment for physio I went for my eye test and got some new specs from tesco (£10 a pair wot a bargain) and found to my surprise that headache from neck had gone. Hooray! two months later got physio appointment so off I trotted and was made to wait an hour to be seen. The advice was to do a few light stretching exercises - this despite being told that I am lifting heavy weights all day at work-, and make another appointment so we can completete your assesment because I just haven't got time to finish it today. Needless to say I did not bother. The main reason being that, surprising though it may seem, my degenerative cartilege disease appears to have miraculously healed itself.

If I were a superstitious cove I would put this down to the intercession of the Blessed Cardinal Newman. But being a cynical old sod. it is more likley to be just another case of medical misdiagnosis. And to think I was nearly lined up for Surgery!

The moral of this story is, I suppose, the NHS is more than capable of wasting it's own time and resources without ungrateful patients helping out by missing appointments, thank you very much. The very idea!