The X-Ray went well. I caught the tram with time to spare and took the correct one (having written it on the back of my hand). It wasn’t too crowded (lunchtime/early afternoon looks like the time to travel) and I arrived with two minutes to spare. Nine minutes later I was walking out. All done. It would have been less if I’d remembered to take my wallet out of my right leg cargo pocket when we started.
It’s important, I think, to mention when the NHS does well. The receptionist I spoke with this morning to make a blood test appointment was very cheerful and efficient too. I was “Number One” in the telephone queue and I can’t recall the last time that happened.
Very little else happened. We had veg stew with dumplings tonight. Tomorrow it is sausage sandwiches with soup – that will be bean and vegetable soup, which is, by coincidence, the ingredients I have left after the two stews.
Daffodils at Mencap garden
I now have a notebook full of ideas too, as it’s the first time I’ve done anything part from work and blood tests for many months.
There were very few masks in evidence. Just three on the tram and a couple in hospital. I can see problems resulting from this.
It seems we have a re-emergence of Whooping Cough as a disease of note. Lockdown and masks just about put a stop to it, so we have brought up a group of kids with no natural immunity. Add this to low vaccination rates and we are looking at a potentially serious situation. Of course, scientists always say this, as do newspapers, who are calling it “the 100 day cough” and “the Victorian disease”. What they don’t tell you is that what they are reporting as “an explosion” of cases is merely a return to the levels we had before lockdown.
Then we have measles. It has killed millions. It can leave you with permanent problems. We have virtually eradicated it, but vaccination rates are a little lower than ideal. On the other hand, I had it as a kid, as did my sister, and we are fine. It’s all a question of balance and it’s easy to get hysterical about these things. I’m sure that there’s a module in Journalism courses “Hysteria and How to Provoke it”. That’s the only explanation for some of the headlines they come up with.
Forsythia
Pictures are random spring flowers from previous years – roll on spring.
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We had five NHS hospital appointments in one day yesterday, organised so we wouldn’t have to travel more than once for them. All on time, all excellent. All the staff very helpful and kind. And the car was charged for free while we were there.
I have COPD but as far as I know, I had it long before I started smoking. (Teacher to me aged 12 – “Why are you always last in races boy?”
Free car charging is good, as are convenient appointments. The human body is a strange thing isn’t it? Coming last in races but maintaining a serious cycling habit. A few years ago a friend of mine collapsed. They found he had a hole in the heart. When he thought about it and asked, much of his childhood sporting trauma came from that.
I’m pleased you have some good NHS news
I thought I should tell people after all the moaning I’ve done in the past.
I am glad to hear you were Number 1, at least for today! The notebook full of ideas sounds like a great thing, too. 🙂
Yes, two good things.
Just had a Covid booster shot. My big worry now is Emphysema which, as my doctor said, we can’t do much about. I stopped smoking 24 years ago but I should have stopped thirty years before that.
I stopped smoking around that time too. I also wish I’d stopped much earlier. WE don’t have Emphysema these days, we have COPD. 🙂
https://www.nhs.uk/conditions/chronic-obstructive-pulmonary-disease-copd/
I will look it up
Like all modern diseases with letters, it’s just the old ones with a gloss of marketing applied . . .:-)