“I thought it was okay.” That’s a phrase I’ve heard many times from patients. They were wrong – otherwise they would almost certainly not have ended up in our intensive care unit. In such cases, those affected have gone through life in pain for days, weeks and sometimes even months without going to the doctor to get to the bottom of the cause. The consequences of not listening to your body’s signals can be fatal.
It was the same with one of my patients, not even 40 years old. A few months earlier he had been diagnosed with diverticulitis. This is a disease of the large intestine: the intestinal wall is so stretched out in some places that it bulges outwards – like small lumps. Remnants of feces can accumulate there, causing inflammation. This can lead to the intestinal wall rupturing in those places, and then we have a huge problem.
The inflammation can also simply disappear again without much medical intervention. That had been the case with the man. But after a few months, the pain in my stomach came back. But he just thought “that’s fine”, probably in the expectation that it would be fine this time as well. So at first he did nothing. However, the pain got worse, so much so that after almost three days he was admitted to the emergency room. By then his intestinal wall had already broken through and he had to have an emergency operation.
Intensive care specialist Pola Gülberg from the Ebersberger district clinic.
(Photo: Peter Hinz-Rosin)
It’s a difficult balancing act. Of course, you don’t have to go straight to the hospital for every pinch – and you shouldn’t either. Because every slate in the finger that comes in the emergency room contributes to the fact that the sensitivity of the doctors is numbed.
Nonetheless, it is important to listen to your own body. You don’t need to know anything about medicine to do this. I observed what that means during my training in gynecology: there were new mothers who immediately put their babies to their breasts – out of instinct. And then there were women who came to the clinic with five guidebooks and with all that theoretical knowledge blocked their natural sense of what was best for them and their baby. That’s not to say you can’t read – I did that when I was pregnant. But that’s not all.
Very few like going to the doctor, if only because it takes time. But those who constantly suppress pain with “that’s fine” might be able to avoid a visit to the family doctor or specialist. But half an afternoon there would definitely be better than ending up in the hospital for several days, including an emergency operation.
Pola Gülberg is an intensive care nurse. In this column, the 38-year-old talks about her work at the district clinic in Ebersberg every week. The collected texts are below sueddeutsche.de/thema/Auf Station to find.