It’s been another flattish sort of day. I spoke to a nurse practitioner from Rheumatology again today. She was not the same one that I spoke to last week and didn’t have any notes relating to what had been discussed last week.
This was disappointing and inefficient, but it’s happened before. I’m trying my best to be nice to NHS staff during this time of stress. Actually, I try to be nice to NHS staff all the time, but they sometimes make it very difficult.
This proved to be the high point of the discussion, which went rapidly downhill. In the end all the points I’d agreed with the other nurse last week were reversed. She did not like me pointing this out.
She also contradicted the advice given by the doctor a few weeks ago – that I should stay indoors and avoid shops – by telling me I was ‘not special’ and could use public transport.
I’m going to carry on being nice to NHS staff, by not covering the whole conversation and not giving my views. She has, she said, come out of retirement to help out during the crisis. Though I am grateful to her for her efforts, I can’t help reflecting that she was trained in the days when the NHS was less concerned with the dignity of the patient, as it is now called.
An example is how they used to administer spinal anaesthetics. I went in about 16 years ago. They made me sit naked on a bed in a room full of staff while they stabbed me in the spine with needles. Last time I went in they allowed me to wear pants and a gown while they stabbed me in the spine through a gap in the back of the gown. Same stabbing, more dignity.
But they still used the same undignified method of inserting a camera into my bladder…
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I feel your pain but there was too much information at the end there.
I will try to restrain my tendency to over-inform.
Good points, though. I am appalled that you were made to sit naked for an epidural 😲 no wonder people put off going to the doctor’s!
Yes, the procedures in urology are sufficiently embarrassing, without adding to them. 🙂
So sorry but it sounds like your assessment of old-school is spot on. At least you know what is right and can hopefully let her “advice” go until you can talk to someone else.
It turned out to be better than expected, though that was partly down to parking being available. Just waiting for the blood results now. 🙂
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That was very rough
To be fair, it was better than expected.
I hear you, Quercus. I am sorry you had to go through that.
Into every life a little rain must fall. 🙂
Lisa made a good point, but son of a biscuit! Of course you should stay in and avoid shops. And public transportation? Worse than the shops.
Sounds like she contradicted generally known advice. Just because she’d come back herself–but it’s her choice (and not yours)…
I once had to inject myself with anti-coagulants for a month using pre-loaded syringes and the training took two minutes. I then realised that about half the nurses who had injected me in hospital were doing it wrong, which was why a lot of the injections hurt, some for a good 24 hours.
It’s hard to convince a highly trained medical professional that there is an alternative. 🙂