A few weeks ago, I went to have my Abdominal Aortic Aneurysm (AAA) scan. I also covered the fact that they won’t scan you unless you agree to have your records shared with other people. It’s all a bit threatening, particularly after they’ve told you about the dangers. I didn’t need to be told, I had a friend who dropped dead from a ruptured aorta while he was in his 50s. However, what I didn’t comment on was that it all felt a bit as if the data wasn’t to help me, but was to be part of a research programme. I already have experience of this with my Annual Pain Survey and the mental health one I used to fill in monthly through lockdown.

There was also a question in my Lung Cancer Screening when they wanted to know about when I left school and what my qualifications were at that point. Research tends to suggest that lower class people are more likely to smoke, and I suspect they are trying to collect some sort of data on that by equating the age when you left school with your intelligence and class. I left school when I was 16 and that has, as far as I am aware, no bearing on the state of my lungs. They didn’t incidentally, want to know if I have ever worked in environments with dust or chemicals in the air (which I have) they just wanted to know if I’d worked with asbestos and what age I left school. Seems a strangely incomplete set of questions.

Waterlilly

Tonight, when we got back from work we both had letters for Liver Health Checks. Suddenly we are very popular. The final paragraph reminds us to take our reading glasses as there may be some forms to sign. I am having a feeling of deja vu about this.

Each one of these consultations (apart from the telephone ones) takes 15-30 minutes, they say. It doesn’t. You have to get there, which means you need to find parking if driving. If using public transport you have to allow for disruptions like roadworks. Then they are often delayed. My last fifteen minute appointment took the best part of two hours.

A friend of mine, who is in his 80s, says hospital appointments are the only social life he has. He takes his wife with him, they use the tram (which is free with a bus pass for Nottingham residents, and then they have tea and cake while they are out. Sounds OK, but at the moment we have jobs and a sense of responsibility to those jobs, particularly as they both took us on in our late 50s, when jobs aren’t easy to find.

Photos are just old ones reused.

Yellow Flag Iris