Seven Hours In A&E

This is in no way meant as a critique of the NHS which, as everyone knows, is a National Treasure - rather a description of what I saw during my Saturday at A&E.

Yesterday morning when I got to work at 10:00 there was an ambulance parked outside. One of our residents, Barry, who has had a stroke was in some difficulty and was being taken to hospital. My colleague Jackie told me that she thought a second resident, Chester, may also have to go to the General. To cut a long story short, I accompanied Chester to the hospital in the ambulance and it just so happened that he (and I) ended up in a bay next door to Barry. But only after 20 minutes in the gangway getting in everybody's way.

I had no money with me for a start, meaning I had to rely on the free water and juice provided, plus one cup of tea I managed to beg from an orderly. That was fine because I didn't expect to be fed and watered and it kept me sharper for my earwigging and general nosiness. Chester is 86 and Barry is 82 and during the whole time we were there Chester wasn't offered a drink - when I asked the orderly for one for him she told me that 'the nurse' said he wasn't allowed one. Barry was given a cup of tea though - sadly, due to his stroke he only has use of one arm and hand and couldn't get the cup from where it'd been left 3 feet away. From about 12:45 meals started to be brought to the department. I think the distribution must've been quite arbitrary because Chester was allocated food by the senior nurse (despite him being in obvious stomach pain from a twisted bowel) whilst Barry was given nothing. I was able to get permission to give Chester's meal to Barry - roast chicken with stuffing; roast spuds and some carrots that could have done double duty as small orange discuses - but I had to feed him since there was no way he could've balanced it on his stomach and eaten it with one hand, and there was no table available either. All I kept thinking was 'what would either of these guys have done if I hadn't been there?' Additionally, neither Chester nor Barry can speak coherently - Chester has dementia and Barry has had the stroke - so it would have been impossible to get any details from them had I not stuck around. There were plenty of staff members around; nurses, senior nurses, auxiliary types, even one or two doctors but nobody to just check folks were drinking or were able to eat the food that was being given out. Having said that, the nursing staff was constantly on the go - there was none of this standing around gassing about their personal life like you see in 'Casualty'. But then there was none of the chatting to patients and solving their problems like you see either...

Throughout the hours I spent darting between Barry and Chester there was a constant stream of people being brought in on stretchers, most of them elderly though some were middle-aged. The majority walked out again under their own steam, within a couple of hours - one even had the strength/energy/whatever to argue over whether his friend, who had followed him in in her car, should have to pay for the 3 hours of parking she'd bought. From what I could glean most people were, or had been, suffering from 'chest pains'...I'm guessing Saturday morning is a prime time for this. Or they had fainted. Nobody came in and had a crash team working on them or had masses of blood on them. There was no sense that anything emergency-like had happened. And everyone had friends, or family including small children, with them. I couldn't get over it because there is a perfectly good and really very efficient 'Walk-In Center' in the city. It's a sort of buffer between a doctor's surgery and the A&E Department - I've been twice recently with Red and would recommend it 100%.

So what are these people doing, clogging up the Health Service, and how much could be saved if they made their own way to the Walk-In Centre? They clearly have people who can drive them around, and they clearly are not really ill (as in not suffering from something critical necessitating emergency treatment)....is that called 'the worried well'? It got me wondering how different it would be if the people at A&E yesterday had been required to pay at source for their treatment, rather than pay through their National Insurance. I'm not advocating the kind of situation we read about in the US where uninsured patients are dumped on the street after receiving emergency treatment but there has to be some kind of check put on the use of our scarce resources. I really don't see that we can continue to spend the kind of money we are spending on health but the problem is that our NHS is such a sacred cow that to try to change it in any way is seen as completely awful and beyond the pale. I don't know what the solution is but before too many years go by I see the inhabitants of the UK having to be insured. Our NHS is good but it's not great, and I don't think we should expect it to be...we just don't pay enough for it. What do you all think?

Barry was admitted with a very nasty chest infection after four hours in A&E; Chester was admitted after six and a half hours in Bay 5, with the possibility of an operation on his bowel; and outside, on my way to get my lift home I passed a chunky girl and her boyfriend, both smoking furiously and arguing about walking home (her choice) versus getting a cab (his choice). She had been brought into A&E on a stretcher two hours earlier......

A Bloody Business

I fulfilled one of my 2012 goals today when I gave blood successfully for the first time ever. Go me!!!!

I'd tried once before, a long time ago, when the Blood Donation Service paid a visit to the offices where I worked as an accountant. It took quite a long time to get the needle into my arm (I am from a family of narrow-veined people; so much so that when my sister V was in hospital once so many veins collapsed in her arms, feet and hands that she ended up with a cannula in her neck. Poor, poor girl!) and when the person eventually did manage to jab it in he collapsed my vein. Not only did he chew my arm up and leave me with a massive bruise from wrist to armpit, he told me I was a 'slow bleeder' and not to try giving blood again. Pig.

Undeterred (well, only for about 26 years!) I decided that as I am a Universal Donor, and since I can only receive my own blood group (thanks, datacreata!), I should try again. So I made it one of my goals for this year. I found the first session of the new year I could and booked an appointment. Just before I went I had my eyebrows and upper lip threaded, so I'd remember what real pain was and though Red was happy to come to that with me she (a fellow universal donor) ducked out of the needle stabbing.

There were a lot of students waiting in the strangely Gothic surroundings of a local church, all eager to 'do their bit'. One girl almost fainted when she'd finished! The first phlebotomist (for that is indeed their title) couldn't get a good vein but the second one said there was a pretty good side one. I smiled bravely. The second lady managed to get a needle in - not massively painful but not pain-free either. Maybe level with waxing, not quite as bad as threading. And five minutes and three seconds later I was done! I'd given my first full 470ml.....a bit less than a pint. I didn't feel like I was wasting away and I didn't feel faint - I just hopped off the bed and walked home carrying my bags of Boots' sale goodies. Oh, and I made my next appointment for June.

If you can give blood (and some people can't - Big Man always did but because of the drugs he takes since his heart attack he can't do it any more. He is also O Rh -ve.) then try to do it. It's always needed.

Just as an aside, after I had Red and was still in the delivery room I was, as a Rh -ve mum, given an anti-D injection. I protested that my husband, the baby's dad was also Rh -ve so surely I didn't need the jab? The midwife said 'yes, but you might have babies with someone else'. A nice thing to say to a panicking young mum whose baby has just been rushed to the SCBU, no? And you all thought they were so considerate in 'One Born Every Minute'.........



Pain

In preparation for my holiday next week I went to the salon today for waxing. It's more than a year since I was last there and my pain threshold has seemingly decreased in that time. When I was a regular I could almost fall asleep during the process but not today. I normally find shin fronts and ankles are the worst and backs of my legs the easiest. Bikini line is obviously pretty hair-raising too (Geddit? Hair-raising!) as are the armpits. Today was just a world of pain from beginning to end. This evening my underarms are burning and feel raw and as for the bikini line....well, best we don't even go there. All I will say is I'm walking like John Wayne. I salute any woman who can tolerate a Brazilian because I had to bite back a small scream when the beautician was splatting the hot wax around my nether regions and ripping hair out by the roots. There can't be many men who could bear it is all I can say.
It doesn't help that I'm....shall we say, on the hairy side. I'm not saying I'm
Frida Kahlo but pale skin and dark, strong hair (don't be fooled by the hair on my head - that hasn't been my real colour since I was 12) is a recipe for hirsuteness. I'm taking comfort from the fact that as you get older you get less hairy - the elderly lady residents I help care for are without exception hairless on their bodies. Not so on their upper lip and chin though....some of them need to be shaved as often as our men.

Talking about bikini waxing made me think of vajazzling (must stress I'm not planning any, just in case you get a little bit sick in your mouth at the idea) and in the interests of research I had a quick look at vajazzling.com. According to the website, 'vajazzling isn't that much different from other forms of bikini area decoration'. I must be a bit of a style numpty because I assumed, in my innocence, that the only form of bikini area decoration available was a pair of bikini bottoms. Red had explained to me quite a while ago what vajazzling is so I was surprised to see that not only can you be vajazzled on your back, arms or chest but that men can be vajazzled as well. Presumably a man very secure with his own sexuality. Or a groom-to-be's rite of passage on his stag night, much like having one eyebrow shaved off. Or a step up from a back, sac and crack wax for Red Nose Day (back to waxing again - sorry, I can't help it, my armpits are really sore!).
I don't see the point of it to be honest - the little stick on stones look cheap and nasty and really, if you think it looks a bit boring down below you could always use one of those Bazooka Joe transfers to cheer the 'bikini area' up. Or a tattoo. My dad went to sea with a man who had 'A Present For A Good Girl' with an arrow pointing downwards tattooed on his lower belly. And Babcia told me a story she'd heard about a trawlerman who used to go into the pub she worked in before she met my dad. Seems he had a couple of huntsmen tattooed on each buttock and a fox's tail disappearing into that place 'where the sun don't shine', as we say in polite society.

Now that's pain.