I wrote this yesterday but watched TV and fell asleep instead of posting it. As it’s easier to add a note rather than rewrite it to keep the timeline consistent, that’s what I’m doing. The lazy ways are often the best.
In my first post today I said that the brain is a strange place. I’ve just been on the phone to the doctor – the phone system of the NHS is an even stranger place.
Bear with seed packet from Kew
I have just had a text from the doctor to tell me to make an appointment to talk to her about my recent MRI scan. So I did. It seems I can’t make an appointment to talk to the doctor now (4pm) I have to ring tomorrow morning at 8am. At that point I can join the queue, or, if it’s a long queue, I can be denied a place in it by a robotic voice and a theatrical click signifying they have cut me off.
As I said, it doesn’t really seem worth overloading the system and involving other people when all I need is a phone call telling me what I already know. How do I know, they asked? Because it’s already been entered on my records, which I have access to. It says “Abnormal but expected”. That’s exactly as I expected because I had an X-Ray months ago which told me that. The nurse also told me that. The receptionist checked. “It says ‘abnormal but expected'”, she said.
Bear in a tree
It means that I have arthritis in a number of joints. They were expecting that. They were actually looking for an infection in the bone. There isn’t one, but that was also expected as I had an X-Ray nearly three months ago.
It’s a good thing, when you look at the timescale, that there is no infection. If there had been, it might have been quite serious by now. But probably not, as I’ve had the swollen toe for two years now without incident. Doctors worry. Sometimes they worry about patient welfare, at other times they worry about being sued or struck off. Either way, I’ve always had more treatment than I want from doctors. They live to find illness and give out pills, but I won’t go in that direction today.
Bear in the Garden
Doctors like to be certain about these things, which I appreciate, but the system creaks a bit in practice. It’s like the urgent X-Ray I once had. Twenty four hours to get the X-Ray, 28 days to get the results. That came back marked “No sinister signs” It felt like I’d been X-Rayed by Dracula.
You don’t even need a highly-trained doctor to read out the results anyway. I’m sure it’s a simple admin job once the report is done. If I can understand it, it can’t be hard.
Bear with pansies
Sometimes I think what the NHS needs is just a bit of common sense and someone who can spot bottlenecks. It doesn’t need doctors and highly paid management consultants getting involved, they could just ask me.
Maybe I should write and see if they need any help . . .
Photos are from May 2018
I am glad they did not find anything unexpected. 🙂
Me too. Also glad they didn’t find anything they expected either. 🙂
You brought many smiles today. Your NHS and the health care free-for-all we have in the USA are equally amusing unless you have something seriously wrong with you- which in many cases I am always surprised to observe, are actually healed, albeit often by some perverse method. Considering the chaos and controversy that exists in the upper levels of the healthcare industry all over the world as regards healthy living – exercise, diet and treatments – it’s a miracle we’re not all nuts. But we’re very resilient in the face of all this medical mismessaging and hoops that must be leapt through, aren’t we? And the medical minions in the trenches really are wonderful, caring workers regardless of all the administrative hoops they also have to jump through every day. It’s a complicated situation, isn’t it? XO
Free health care is its own worst enemy – the more people it cures, the more long-term problems it creates for itself. However, after we both ended up in hospital last year we were glad to have it. 🙂
I am a great believer in common sense solutions, that is as long as they are exactly the ones that I have thought of.
Sounds fair. It’s my view too. 🙂
Good to hear you’re going to be around a bit longer, I won’t comment on Drs it would just take too long. You should contact the NHS all they lack is common sense, but i find that with all government agencies these days. The teddy looks like my childhood one, except he only had one eye, I guess it was a hand me down.
And you know what they say about common sense. I found out recently that my sister threw my childhood teddy bear away. Did he end up on the tip or tied to the front of a dustcart? She keeps so much crap but she throws Ted away. This is going to take some forgiving.
Hmmm, sisters? Very strange creatures in my opinion. Why do that?
They are strange. And I have absolutely no idea. The more I think about it, and the rammel she keeps, the more I find it incomprehensible. But, it’s a good subject for a poem and for a successful author of books about curry shops so we might both gain from it. 🙂
😂 Aye there’s always someone out there that sparks an idea 😉
It’s a year since Julia’ accident. I had a poem about it published a couple of months ago. I tactfully avoided mentioning it. 🙂
Wise choice 😂
That’s what I thought. 🙂
Well, good news but what a lot of bother. The bear with the pansies, one of my favorite flowers, is adorable.
Thank you. He was pictured in the Mencap Garden eight years ago. Time flies, but a bear of beauty is a joy forever, as are pansies. I love to combination of purple and yellow.
Me, too! Love the purple and yellow.
That’s why I like irises too. 🙂
Nothing abnormal there then
🙂 It all depends on how you define “normal” I suppose.