When you go in to see your health care team it's really important to be the spokesperson for your own body.
You're the person who knows what you’re experiencing - no-one else is experiencing that - so you’re the expert, and the people who you're seeing really want to understand what you're experiencing - they can't help as well if they don't understand what's going on.
So they want to hear in your words what your week or your day’s been like what's going on for you, and what it feels like.
Sometimes it's tempting to let your parents or somebody else to speak for you but this is your body and your experience and the best way forward is if you're the spokesperson.
So um… when the… we started seeing the specialists, so we saw two different specialists in my time so the first one I was able to give a run-down of the story and the specialist was… and mum was able to give… fill in the details about that, so… I guess I was able to get a feel of what type of questions they were asking so when I saw my second specialist, which is the one that I stayed with for the remainder of the year, I was able to ask a lot more questions and it was really good for me being able to be more confident in myself to get my point across and say well, this is my pain, this is my issue and let's help with that and it was really good being able to take control of that, I guess, but it was also good having mum and dad there to support me and fill in those last little details for me as well.
When Bayly goes to the doctor he doesn't say much at all.
No, he's not great, he's… he’s your typical when you go to see a doctor and the first thing they say to you his you is, “How're you going?” and you go “Good”, and you go, obviously you're not good or you wouldn't be at a doctor and what we’re trying to say to Bayly is tell Doctor Chato that your hip was hurting the other day or tell Doctor Chato that you've had trouble with your knees and so I'm trying to prompt him and maybe remind him because… and it's also a case with Bayly of, it's not hurting today, therefore it's not hurting.
When the specialist said that you might need to go into hospital and have surgery to actually get the achilles tendon lengthened or whatever it was I did have a few questions that I needed to write down to make sure we covered those bases because it was imperative that in my mind that I knew exactly where we were and how we were going and I guess that's what… I would say to most kids that you need to make sure that you know what you're doing, how everything’s going and that you're taking responsibility for your chronic pain issue.
So write some things down about what your pain feels like and what's important to you.
Write down your questions and then when you're at the appointment you can rely on that piece of paper and those reminders so that nothing gets missed out ‘cause these people really want to help you.
