Over lunch recently a friend said she just had a bone density scan and that maybe I should have one too. She said that her result had been great but the friend who had recommended it to her had received a disastrous result.
As I'm 52 and past the menopause, I thought it was a good idea. The following day I booked myself in to a London clinic at a cost of £40. After a brief questionnaire about my general health, the man doing the screening asked me if I'd broken a bone within the last five years. I had. I'd broken my thumb when I came off a moped in Italy the previous year.
He then instructed me to put my right heel into a box-like machine on the floor. I then repeated the procedure with my left foot. Very shortly the results arrived. "I'm afraid these are the worst results I've seen in a very long time," he said. It was as if I'd been punched in the stomach. I waited. He then explained that there were various options open to me. Still winded, I said that probably the best thing to do would be to go and see my GP. He pointed out that if I went to a doctor they would only tell me to take drugs whereas at this clinic they would treat me holistically.
There followed a lecture about calcium-to-magnesium ratio and how there was no point in just taking calcium, because it could only be absorbed properly with magnesium. There were various other things I could take such as Kordel's bone formula, Ester C - a non-acidic vitamin C - Omega-3 oil, and also I should think about doing some load-bearing exercise.
I was offered an appointment with the consultant whose clinic it was. Unfortunately she wasn't available right away and I couldn't wait. I left clutching a sheaf of literature. Back in my car I burst into tears; the terrible vision had entered my head that my skeleton was about to crumble to dust.
The next thing I did was to go and see my GP, who immediately made an appointment at St Mary's Hospital radiology department in London for another scan. This time it would be a DXA body scan, which would give me the density of my spine and hips. After a fortnight, the results came back. Normal. No treatment necessary. But how normal? I rang the consultant who had analysed the test and asked her if it was borderline normal or really, properly normal. "Oh you're tickety-boo," was her response. Meaning? I asked. "Excellent," she replied, "you have the bone density of a 30-year-old." Not about to crumble to dust then? "No, definitely not."
What a relief. I mentioned this result to the friend who had suggested the scan in the first place. She passed the news on to the friend who had received the bad result and had been taking magnesium and calcium for the previous three months with almost permanent diarrhoea during that period. She booked herself a body scan on the NHS. Guess what? Her results were normal too. So out of our little sample of three at the private clinic, two diagnoses were arguably wrong.
I felt I should write to the consultant and tell her. I rang the clinic to get the address and who should pick up the phone but the consultant herself. I tried to explain what had happened. Far from being pleased for me, she took a very hostile tone - vouching for her machines without so much as volunteering to look into their performance.
Paradoxically, it struck me that it was better from her point of view for her results to be correct than for me to be OK.
