A non-medical disease - A Tragedy

This morning a 61 year old male patient came in with a complaint of joint pain which, he claimed, was recurrent in nature. When I examined the joints there were really no evidence of inflammation like swelling, redness,tenderness or warmth. It was a rather non-specific kind of complaints.

Actually the patient had been on my follow up for almost one year since the first time I saw him in 2008. I found him then to be suffering from anaemia not amenable to treatment with iron tablets and after determining that the condition was not due to iron deficiency, I promptly referred him to the haematology (blood diseases) unit at the hospital. I did not see him for more than one year when he turned up in my clinic in the middle of 2010 with chronic cough and my investigation showed that he had TB. He was immediately put on anti-TB short-course therapy for three months and regularly monitored.

He seemed to have gone away for several months till he turned up again today at my clinic. He was still anaemic, thin and tired. His joints, despite his complaints were not flaring up, so what was it that made him come see me? My curiosity was promptly answered when he took out of his bag a letter from the Insolvency Department asking him to pay a certain amount of money owed from a loan company and he wanted to get a letter from a doctor to say that he could not work so is unable to pay the stated amount instead  he wants to reduce it by 50%.  He had borrowed the money some years ago to buy a car and according to him he was not able to meet his monthly commitment soon after and the car was taken from him and finally auctioned off.

Borrowing money for a lifestyle which one cannot afford is a disease. It is not the same as borrowing money for a vehicle which one uses, for example, to transport goods as part of a business deriving income. And what is a man of 61 doing at this late stage of his life paying off a loan  for which he has no regular income and no saving? It is a desperate situation indeed. A doctor cannot treat this disease.

I wonder how many people are bankrupt as a result of keeping up with the Joneses. I suppose it only happens in urban areas where materialism seems to have been entrenched. It is also a lesson to people who fail to plan for their future which in this man, would include having the possibility of being burdened with diseases in old age thus unable to continue working for income.

Holiday in the sun by the pool and the beach

For those of us blessed with health and youth, it is time to have a proper financial planning if you haven't already started. Start with regular saving and then make the money work for you through prudent investing and diversifying. In the process, delayed gratification is essential. Health and especially youth, needless to say, are not forever. And remember a non-medical disease is a tragedy.