So what is wrong with you?

It is a bit of a comic cliché that when older people get together they talk about their operations and try to top one another with the list of procedures they have experienced. Yet whilst we may laugh, the silence of the rest of us about any medical conditions has lead to amazing ignorance. Despite the shelves of any book store being full of Self Help guides, with much discussion being around the health qualities of this diet or that, there is a general ignorance about how our bodies work and how they can go wrong. One of the ways to confront this would be more open discussion about what happens when they do go wrong. I had a terrifying bleed with practically no warning. It was estimated that I lost a fifth of all my blood. If it had to happen anywhere, I was pleased it happened in the Rectory with no-one else present. This felt to me as God's care. If it had happened whilst I was taking an assembly in school or a service in church or at the Crematorium, or even just walking along the road, how many other people would it have terrified? I had never heard of such a thing happening. Yet since I came home, I have been approached by two men in our community in Ingatestone who had the same experience. It happened to both of them a number of years ago and they have never had it repeated. I had never heard of such a thing happening. 

A friend in the village has recently had a very rare debilitating and unpleasant condition identified by the medical professionals. Like everyone, he felt better when he was able to give the condition a name. Whilst he has not found anyone locally with a similar condition, a short bout of searching on the Internet has lead to discovering support groups in England and more importantly e-mail contacts to share experiences with other suffers. This has been a huge psychological boost for him to find other people who do understand how this has affected his life. It is clear that this mutual support has helped him in his recovery. 
There can be little doubt that increased public awareness of symptoms of all kinds of conditions would save lives. When I was recently taken to hospital, the paramedics told me that for them it was an everyday reality to deal with emergency cases that could have been avoided if the patient had noticed earlier symptoms and acted upon them. To act in this way you need both courage and knowledge. Some of that knowledge is around us in the medical conditions in the community where, due to embarrassment or other reasons, people keep silent. Over the years I have told many people that their conditions are not a punishment from God. Instead we can be thankful for the expertise of doctors and the treatments available. 

Revd. Patrick Sherring, Rector of Ingatestone and Fryerning.www.ingatestoneparishchurch.org.uk