Personal Blogs

Fig.1 Lichen Planus

Since I can remember, perhaps age 7 or 8, I have suffered from a toothache-like or earache-like intermittent pain in the side of my face, sometimes leading to stomach cramps and nausea. Every decade over the last four I go through a round of tests which last week, completing a series of discoveries and insights that have spiralled to this conclusion - I am diagnosed as getting 'Lichen Planus'. I even had on my phone a list of some 23 allergic triggers: foods, drinks, airborne pollutants. It ties in with both asthma and rhinitis and weak or faulty, localised, response of my immune system.

I'm not the doctor, but it is the case, and perhaps increasingly should be for all of us, that we not only hold our personal medical records, but take a professional-like interest in their contents, not to burden the Health System, but to aid in the pinpointing of problems, to help prevention alongside medication. 

It took a chance visit to the dentist the day after a trip to the GP for prescription painkillers. And a photograph, not this one, but to 'capture' what was going on various efforts to photograph the inside of my mouth meant that I could show the GP what was going on during a flare up.

How many ailments could and now are rapidly diagnosed in this way? 

Meanwhile, self-discipline requires that, amongst other things, I avoid:

• certain toothpastes and mouthwashes
• alcohol (bear, wine, cider ... purer spirits might be ok)
• chocolate
• tomatoes
• certain refined flours
• apples
• cumin seeds
• spicy chinese and indian foods
• chocolate digestive biscuits
• cheap pasties
• certain perfumes, bleaches and paints ... the car screenwash set's my face off

Actually I need to become a fish  

Meanwhile, I carelessly tried to register for a module ten minutes before registration closed and appear to have missed it. Intermediate French will have to wait.