"I Thought It Was Just Part of the Job": One Crofter's Story

Euan has been running his croft near Kilninver for the better part of thirty years. Sheep, some cattle, and the kind of relentless list of tasks that anyone in crofting will recognise. He's not someone who complains easily. When the stiffness in his hands started getting worse — thickening around the joints, some loss of grip strength, pain that was sharp in the mornings and duller but persistent through the day — he put it down to the cold and the years of work. "I thought it was just what happened," he says. "You get older, your hands get rougher. I assumed it was the same for everybody."

It wasn't until Euan stopped at the Vibrant Health Advocates – Janus stand at the Argyll County Show that he had a proper conversation about what he was experiencing. He'd walked past the table a couple of times, he admits, not quite sure it was for him. Then a volunteer he half-recognised from the mart struck up a chat, and within a few minutes Euan found himself describing symptoms he'd been carrying quietly for well over a year.

The volunteer didn't diagnose him — that's not what the organisation does. But she asked the right questions, and one of them stopped Euan in his tracks: was the stiffness worse in the morning, and did it ease off after moving around for half an hour or so? When he said yes, she mentioned that this pattern was worth discussing with his GP, and that it could point to something that responded well to treatment if caught reasonably early. She gave him a printed sheet, explained a few things clearly, and encouraged him to book an appointment.

He went the following week. His GP referred him on, and within a few months he had a diagnosis of rheumatoid arthritis and was starting on a treatment plan. The difference has been significant. "I'm not going to pretend I'm twenty-five," Euan says, laughing. "But my hands work properly again. I can grip things. The mornings aren't something I dread." He's clear that the conversation at the show was the turning point. Without it, he thinks he would have carried on dismissing the symptoms for another year, perhaps longer.

Stories like Euan's are the reason Vibrant Health Advocates – Janus does what it does. There is no shortage of medical knowledge available in the world, but knowledge doesn't reach people automatically — it needs to travel through human conversation, through presence in the right place at the right time, through someone taking a moment to ask how you're getting on. That's what our volunteers do, week in and week out, at shows and marts and in farm kitchens across Argyll.

If you're carrying something you're not sure about — a symptom you've been meaning to look into, a concern about your own health or a family member's — please don't wait for it to become urgent. Come and talk to us at one of our events, or reach out directly. We're here for exactly this.