My little HYPOT continues along, mostly under the surface or in the background but some of the stories it creates or the thoughts it provokes are perhaps worth sharing here.
It’s 4 1//2 months since I was diagnosed with Hypothyroidism and I’ve read what I can and done what I can and tried to improve my lifestyle and control my controllables in the best possible way to reduce the number of symptoms that I get.
My thyroxine dose is pretty high, and it is supressing my TSH (thyroid stimulating hormone in my pituitary) to levels that are a little bit low (and that can cause a problem in itself).
I still have symptoms which mostly are what I call ‘thyroid legs’ and brain fog and low levels of narcolepsy.
I tried to seek out some expert advice on this (because my symptoms are just not significant enough to take up someone’s NHS place) and I tried two different avenues, but one was personal recommendation to a physician who works privately in the centre of Nottingham.
And so, I contacted doctor Maksoud at his office in Nottingham.
He came on personal recommendation from a friend of Alison’s (by far the best way to find someone like this) but also after a failure of going through the standard channels at the local Spire hospital to find a GP with an interest in Hypothyroidism and to message him and to get no reply and so then I started to navigate the Maksoud system.
He is extremely thorough in the information that he wishes to access before he sees you and that is so he can limit his appointments and limit his charges.
He ordered a full 3-year history from my GP and a referral letter from my GP (which at the time I found hugely frustrating) and lots of things filled in so that when I turned up at 8.15am on Monday 25th he knew a lot about me.
Throughout his appointment he insisted on calling me Doctor (he had no idea what I did for a living or certainly I had not given him any idea of that in any of the information) and that fascinated me.
He’s an old-style consultant, I’d say maybe 55 and I don’t think works in the NHS anymore (I don’t think, he perhaps does but I can’t see where).
He works privately and doesn’t work for insurance companies so it’s fee per item (a bit like me) and he’s kind, really kind but really effective.
He called me in from the front door himself and took me up the stairs and sat me down at his desk (his office is not Campbell Clinic posh but it’s nice), there was a plastic cup of water on the desk to sip as I spoke to him and he wrote 5 pages of notes as I spoke.
Every so often during the procedure he would voice message his assistant and ask her to email one or two things that he wanted for me and he dictated a very long letter for my GP whilst I was sat there.
He examined my stomach and my chest and my neck and then drew me a diagram of a car, to explain how the thyroid works.
He told me that my thyroid was the architect of my metabolism but then the architect needs builders and workers to do its work and so my builder and workers aren’t working.
He was really kind and gentle and reassuring while carefully explaining all the possible paths we might take from here.
I was taught by one of the best surgeons I have ever known to be a physician first and this man is a physician.
(There was a slightly arrogant part of me that wanted to get hold of his systems with some of my team and make it extraordinarily better and make his life much easier but I’m sure he’s quite happy with what he’s got and what he does).
What will happen now is that I’ll have many blood tests carried out at King’s Mill hospital; in Mansfield because that’s where he suggests going because their blood tests are the most accurate that he’s found because they have their own lab on site for every one of the tests.
He was happy for my GP to do it under the NHS but then they would go to Queen’s Medical Centre and then to London and there would be no control over the results.
I’ll have the bloods done and then he’ll sit with me and go through every single one and explain its significance.
10 days ago, I sat for 2 days with Rony Jung who was perhaps one of the best clinicians I’ve seen in our world and then on Monday I sat with doctor Maksoud and realised why he’s one of the only physicians I’ve seen who practices entirely fee per item privately in the centre of Nottingham and has a business which is almost entirely generated by word-of-mouth referral.
Isn’t it always the way?
You wait ages for one truly inspirational clinician to come along and then two come along together.
Blog Post Number - 3156