Health and Body Image
Helen Byrne
I was born in Glossop Terrace, Cardiff, in April 1971. Mum was in labour for two days, which just about sums me up. Make them wait.
I spent two years of my life driving my parents up the wall. I cried all night, every night. Dad would drive me around Roath Park at all hours. I’d fall asleep and as soon as he got home and stopped the engine, I’d be off again. They didn’t sleep for two years and finally the doctor told them I was ‘hyperactive’. I was given something to help me sleep and mum couldn’t sleep as she was worried that I wasn’t making any noise anymore.
I didn’t catch diseases as a child. If someone had chicken pox, we’d all be carted around to their house in the hope we’d catch it. I never did, but I always gave it to someone else. I became a ‘carrier’ of disease. During Covid this became asymptomatic, which has a nicer ring to it than ‘carrier of disease’. I finally caught chicken pox at 13 after catching a virus in France on a school holiday and foolishly visiting my little cousins. It got me. I sat scratching a little spot and mum had a look. She rang my nan who was deployed to the house armed with calamine lotion and covered me from head to toe. The spots went everywhere. Down my throat, in my ears and one big spot which I accidentally knocked off and still have a mark on my forehead, which I try to cover with a fringe. I sat in salt baths and had pink patches of calamine for a good while afterwards.
I was a careful child, aware of breaking bones etc, so took care not to fall off things. I did, however, end up in the Royal Infirmary in A&E. I was in school and decided to take the small rubber from the top of my pencil and place it in my nostril. I turned to my friend to make her laugh and snorted loudly myself. The rubber flew up my nostril and refused to budge. The school rang my mum, and she was there in minutes as we lived a few doors away. She took me home and she and her friends decided that pepper was the answer. If I sneezed it would fly out. I was instructed to sniff the pepper, but the rubber just went further up my nose until it appeared to be under my eye. I was taken to A&E where a huge pair of forceps were put up my nose and I made a mental note not to mess about with pencil rubbers again. When we came out of the hospital I asked mum if I could stay home for the afternoon whilst pulling a sad face. ‘No,’ she replied, and I was taken back to school and greeted like a hero for being so brave. Time off from school was for serious things, not stupid jokes that backfire.
The one issue I had was with my stomach. I’d often complain about tummy pain in the vain hope mum would let me stay home. The response was a bottle of liquid paraffin brandished in my direction, and suddenly I’d be much better thanks. I had my ears syringed as a child as I had, and still have, issues with them. I recall the horror of the water in my ears and crying loudly. My mum gave me an Animal bar of chocolate afterwards and I still shudder when I see one now.
I started to have issues with my periods at 15, in the 1980s, and the standard answer for me and all my friends with similar issues was to put us on the pill. The pill was the great solver of all problems at that time. It stopped the issues, but all these years later I believe it did more harm than good. At 46 things went haywire and I was in a terrible state. They gave me the pill injection instead. It hid a multitude of issues. During the pandemic, injections were only given if needed and the pill was not on that list. So I started taking the oral pill. Immediately the issues began again, and I couldn’t leave the house. I was so anaemic, my thyroid stopped working, my white blood count went up and I couldn’t walk up the stairs without gasping. Everything was breaking down. I had tests with the NHS, three biopsies with no pain relief (the nurse asked me to let go of the seat as I’d pushed myself up in the air from the pain), an internal exam where the doctor told me she couldn’t find my ovaries and I told her I’d definitely packed them that morning when I left the house, and numerous other tests. Dignity went out of the window, although the team were fabulous and caring. It wasn’t cancer and as it wasn’t urgent, my wait for a hysterectomy would be six years. I have private medical cover, so I rang them and saw a wonderful consultant who performed a hysteroscopy and told me I had adenomyosis. A few weeks later she pulled some strings, and I was in an NHS hospital. I’d not had a general anaesthetic before and when I came around, I was so sick. I was utterly exhausted by it all. Regardless of these things I was out of hospital the next day, having to inject myself every day and not drive or lift anything. A few days after the op I was out and about. Somehow, I’d recovered quickly, and it was the biggest relief. I’m angry that the pill was used to cover a serious condition. Women’s reproductive health is not taken seriously and is often seen as something we have to live with. My friends and I discuss it often and find out what we can from each other. It’s not a proactive thing that we learn about through the NHS. Thank god for a wonderful GP and consultant. My mum recalled my nan having a hysterectomy and going to a convalescent hospital for two weeks afterwards. She was cut open for her op, whereas mine was done by keyhole surgery. There are no scars on me, and I recovered so much faster for it.
I grew up in a world where you didn’t bother the doctor. Maybe it was a hangover from the days you had to pay for a doctor to visit, but my family would not go to the doctor unless it was necessary. Mental health wasn’t discussed, referred to in whispers as ‘suffering with their nerves’ and hidden away. When my own mental health deteriorated, I didn’t feel I could talk to anyone. It took until I was 48 before I found the right therapy, by which time I was clinging on to my sanity.
My mum has recently started to have seizures. I cannot praise the NHS enough. They have been there for her every time she has a seizure and she’s now in the care of the ECAS team. They’ve reviewed her meds, sent people to the house to see what she needs to support her mobility issues, got her to join a support group, provided physiotherapy and she has their contact details to talk about any concerns she has. It’s a little-known service and it’s a lifesaver. Knowing they are there for her makes it easier to deal with our own fears. I am lucky to have the support of private health care if needed, but it alarms me that people I know are waiting such a long time for procedures to be done. It feels like the NHS is reactive now, rather than proactive. The fault lies in funding and structures. The team work hard with what they have, but it’s frustrating for them and for us. I recently spent a lot of time in A&E with mum, and the sheer numbers of people waiting is overwhelming. There doesn’t seem to be the opportunity to spend time with people, just to fix them up and send them out and on to the next one. How demoralising for the team there, and not the answer to long term issues. There needs to be a holistic approach to health rather than looking at one symptom and fixing that. We all need to be more aware of what we can do too. It’s a bond between us and the NHS. People live longer now, which is wonderful, but this means more old age illnesses are happening and there’s little support for people. Care services cost so much and the carers in families have to work much longer now. It’s not joined up thinking and people suffer for it.
As I watch my mum deteriorate, I know we have the support of the healthcare teams, and it’s given me peace of mind to know the NHS is there. It’s not perfect by any means, like lots of public services, but it’s there and does its best to keep us safe. I have also not bought another pencil with a rubber on the end of it. Never again.