Share The Dis-ease!

Around lunchtime, a rolling thunder of pain spread through my arms, from shoulder through to extremities. It was more like a series of dull thuds rather than any sharp ache, excepting the elbows where the sensation was more akin to 'pain' rather than an ache.

I duly strapped up the elbows and, got on with the minor task of preparing lunch. Whilst listening to the afternoon play, BBC Radio 4, it became essential to tackle the severe discomfort in my left arm, far from a new phenomenon. The only way of regaining any comfort was to hold the upper-arm, tightly clamped to the torso, with the forearm stretched (at a 90 degree angle) across the small of my back with fingers outstretched. After maintaining this posture for about 30 minutes, the discomfort was somewhat alleviated.

The problem is, how does one express this to one's GP in the course of a short consultation? A pattern of shifting muscular and joint pains, ranging from near numbness to acute nagging, even to a state which feels like total muscular exhaustion, is much easier to suffer than express. Perhaps it is part and parcel of the overwhelming sense of fatigue which seems to pervade at least half of all my "waking" hours.

Although I am being treated for depression, I can't help feeling that a more accurate diagnosis would be frustration ... the impossibility of expressing the near inexpressible sense of dis-ease within a brief formal consultation!

One further question arises : is it appropriate, when in consultation with a psychiatrist, to concentrate all the attention on one's physical ailments? I do have a history of depression but, never in the course of my current "treatment" have the symptoms resembled those of any previous bout of the said illness! The physical ailments make it extremely difficult to pursue the social excursions which could prove beneficial were it simply "a state of mind".