When a doctor becomes a patient, it transforms their care

Occasionally, doctors become patients too. While I wouldn’t wish ill-health on anyone, it can be an edifying lesson for medical professionals to suddenly be on the other side. 

This happened to me a few months ago when I had a kidney stone, which had decided to make its unwelcome presence known in a rather dramatic fashion just as I was going out for dinner with a friend.

The pain came from absolutely nowhere but within minutes I was incapacitated. Fellow sufferers will sympathise, I have no doubt. I was quite taken aback by how astonishingly painful it was. 

Of course, being a doctor, I initially refused to believe that anything was wrong.

I was haunted by all the embarrassed people I have seen over the course of my career who have come to A&E convinced they are dying only for it to be nothing more than trapped wind.

It’s hard not to forget their mortified faces as they burp loudly and the pain vanishes and they sheepishly skulk out of the department.

I wasn’t going to be humiliated by trapped wind, so instead opted to writhe around screaming for several hours until I had to admit that yes, probably this was something more serious than a stubborn belch. 

I was particularly pleased to read afterwards in a medical textbook that renal colic, as the pain is known, is the “most excruciatingly painful event a person can endure…the pain is often described as being worse than childbirth.”

I took great delight in telling my mum that. It’s also rather irritating because it’s not as though what came out is going to look after me in my old age, as happens in childbirth. 

Given the pain, I had assumed the offending stone was actually a small boulder. I was therefore fairly deflated when it finally came out and it looked more like a piece of aquarium gravel. How could something so small be so painful?

While I wouldn’t readily repeat the experience, it was certainly interesting to be on the punter side of medicine for once. 

The pain had waxed and waned and during the moments when it was less intense, it did strike me how awful pain is.

It’s no wonder chronic pain drives people to suicide. While doctors talk about pain and its management, it’s hard to put into words quite how draining and debilitating it really is until you’ve experienced it for yourself.

And even then, there’s something about the way our brains deal with pain that, once it’s over, we quickly forget how much it affects us and how incapacitating it is. 

During my time in hospital, various doctors came to speak to me. They were all very nice and polite but one stuck out in my mind. He was actually the most junior of them all, but something about his manner was incredibly calming and reassuring.

It took a while before I put my finger on what it was he was doing that was making me feel so relaxed and reassured. Whenever he came to my bed to speak to me, he knelt down so he was at my eye level.

It seems such a small, simple thing, but it meant that he never loomed over me, as all the other doctors and nurses did.

Just that one simple act of kneeling down made all the difference. It’s a trick I’m going to start using myself. There’s something to be said for getting down to your patient’s level.