> This Thursday just gone I was at the hospital for a regular checkup and was told that the clot in my leg has now dissolved. So now I can come off the warfarin.
>
> However, since then, I have developed serious lumps in the lymph nodes of my head and neck, the cough I've had for the last eight months shows no sign of abating and my joints ache more or less constantly.
>
> I have visited various specialists over the past week and been poked, prodded and endoscoped. The last down my nose to look at my throat and was a fairly icky experience. Anyone who's ever stuck things just *too* far up their nose will know the feeling. Had a chest X-ray, but it didn't seem to show anything, so I am going to have an MRI instead. The lumps are to be biopsied soon, which involves a day stay at the hospital as it will be under a general anaesthetic. Enough blood has been taken at various times I feel like I have given a full donation.
>
> The fingernails thing seems to be congenital as I can't remember them being any other way and I'm not showing other symptoms, as might be associated with what's called "clubbing" of the fingers.
>
> As an almost throwaway comment the doc mentioned I have arthritis, which explains why I can hardly stand up in the morning and cannot get out of any seat without leverage. Not got any medication for it yet, either.
>
> Well, that seems to be *all* that's wrong with me presently. The various docs are in conflab with each other to find out exactly what's ailing me, because they all seem to be connected. I don't know the results yet, but I'll post them here.
>
> I also have to admit that, so far, 2005 has NOT been a good year for me.
>
> Bea"Turned 35 and suddenly it's all downhill from there.."sty

Thirty-five! That laundry list of ailments sounds like somebody twice your age. But at least you are young enough to hope for a cure. When you are 72, they just tell you to live with it. Everytime I go to the doctor, he tells me a bunch of stuff that I have to live with and a bunch more that I have to live without. My diet is so rigid, I sometime eat the same stuff for days. I know about the blood. I go in about every four months so they can drain off a gallon and I have to donate a drop every morning. I get hungry about every 15 minutes, but I'm only allowed to eat six times a day. And only a little bit at a time.

However, I have adjusted to the creaky joints, the aching back, the dizzy spells, and some other minor conditions that are common to folks my age, and I have to admit that I am doing a lot of things I like to do, and I'm having fun.

Medical care is getting better. It seems to be gaining by leaps and bounds. The downside is more and more testing, but the upside is that cure rates are much more encouraging than they were a decade ago. They can control most of the things they can't cure, and old coots like me don't always feel old. Come to think of it, I feel better now that I did back when I had to work for a living. Seven-day weekends are great.

So trust your doctors. Do exactly what they say, and before you know it, you will be old enough to expect a few ailments. More often than not, those bad years are followed by good ones.
Howard