I see him every three months now.
I have this full massive set of bloods taken, which looks at every sort of part of the biochemistry of my body to make sure nothing is going wrong or breaking down (as far as bloods can ever tell you).
He examines my abdomen, listens to my heart and my lungs, checks for nodes, etc, etc, etc.
It's an extraordinary experience, reassuring, I guess, but mostly it's the advice that he gives and the advice outside of medicine.
He is an extraordinary man, 60 years old now, wanting to work to 91 (definitely someone after my own heart).
He set up a charity clinic in his home country of Egypt, and he's now employing five administrative staff because the degree of unemployment in some parts of Egypt is 80%.
He's a brilliant physician (at least as far as I can tell from brilliant physicians), but his main advice this time was sunshine.
He told me that I had to have a sunny holiday every eight weeks if I could possibly afford it. He said that would keep me going for the longest possible time and allow me to work into the longest possible place.
He's actually written a letter to my wife to tell her that (that's probably going to get me killed) but it's interesting.
All of my bloods are great. Everything looks to be right in the place it should be; my weight is good, my blood pressure is good, and my resting heart rate is good, but I still have the symptoms of Long Covid at least 10%.
He's told me it'll take another year to get rid of that, but he's convinced of where I am and what I've had, and the history of my disease.
Covid induced thyroiditis into long covid and then out of long covid on the advice of someone brilliant.
The narrative around this is that it's a blessing.
It will make me look after myself better than I've ever done before, and one of the people so closely involved in this (apart from the tremendous help I get from my wife) is Hisham Maksoud.
Everybody needs one of those, I think, if they can possibly afford it (it's just probably why the rich live longer, and that's so depressing - in another blog).
Blog Post Number - 3430
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