Tag Archives: NHS

Part 3 – Free at Last!

After the drainage procedure the pain immediately subsided, and I suspect that what remained was due to the drainage rather than the abscess.

We will now deal with the bed. It finally arrived from a secret off-site location (after a second call was placed), at 9.30. That’s about 8 hours. I presume it was either stored a long way away, or that it was close and they pushed it all the way by hand. To suggest a third choice, that it took eight hours because they couldn’t organise a party in a brewery, would be a cheap shot.

It was a monster, requiring furniture to be moved round, and had a pump which operated constantly, and noisily, to keep the special mattress inflated (this strikes me as a bad thing in a piece of furniture designed to facilitate sleep).

There were other faults – the main one being that it was so high I couldn’t get into it unassisted. For some reason The Great Bed of Ware comes to mind. City Hospital is currently running a campaign (End PJ Paralysis) to encourage patients to get dressed properly and get active. Strange really, considering they seemed to go out of their way to render me immobile.

I won’t mention the the list of other faults, as several of them have already come back to me as bad dreams. It’s difficult to imagine anyone being traumatised by a bed, but I promise you, on top of everything else, that bed came close to breaking my spirit.

Once I had been assisted into bed, and we had addressed various problems with adjustments things took a turn for the worse when a junior doctor arrived with a cannula. I had hoped to avoid having one but it seemed that they couldn’t get enough antibiotics into me by mouth alone. When you think of the alternatives I suppose intravenous isn’t so bad.

As usual, it didn’t go in at the first attempt and the doctor decided to try my right hand. I try to avoid the right hand as I often catch it whilst doing things. In this case, I started by bleeding on the book I was reading; this wouldn’t have happened if the cannula had been in the left hand. Second, I caught it on the cuff of my nightshirt whilst preparing to wash next morning, This resulted in a cannula that stuck out at a strange angle. I got it roughly back in position and replaced the dressing as well as I could, but it wasn’t quite right.

The rest of the day passed in a haze of boredom punctuated by random bottom inspections. Dark forces are obviously afoot in the NHS, striking back at the rising trend of patient dignity. Under the guise of skin inspections to prevent bed sores, random members of staff wander along at irregular intervals and demand to see my heels and bottom.

I may refuse to show them next time, on the grounds I am a man, not a baboon.

Finally, Julia arrived to visit and help with my liberation. The first thing she did was point to a spot by my side and say “What’s that?”

It was the cannula. I must have plucked it straight out, which couldn’t have taken much effort as I didn’t even notice.

We asked a passing nurse to dispose of it instead of leaving it lying about. She didn’t seem grateful for our help in keeping the place tidy, but maybe she was just sad at the idea of losing me.

My Plastic Footprint

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I’m feeling uncomfortable in more ways than the obvious one at the moment. Apart from the feeling of discomfort in the bladder area I have a feeling of guilt about Julia running round fetching and carrying for me. On top of that I’ve just been calculating the amount of plastic waste I’m going to produce before my return to hospital.

It’s going to be six weeks before I return. That’s 42 days.

For those of you not familiar with the equipment involved, it starts with a Foley catheter. Don’t read the link unless you have a real thirst for knowledge, it’s just a catheter that stays in place because they blow up a small balloon on the end to keep it in place.

Definitely don’t read it if you currently have one inserted as I’ve just scared myself to death by reading all the possible problems.

They can also, it seems, be used to stop nosebleeds. The mind boggles.

The catheter is plugged into a leg bag.

It is secured to my leg by Velcro straps, which is a skill in itself. Secure it too far down and you can get quite a twinge when you stand up. If I could find an emoticon showing a man with massive googly eyes and drops of sweat I would use it now. That’s how it feels. I now secure it as close to knee level as possible.

You can get one with a longer tube, but giving one to the man who is six feet two would be too simple.

The whole point of the procedure, from my point of view, is to get a decent night’s sleep so I don’t really want to be getting up all the time to empty it. This is where the night bag comes in. It’s four times the size and you can get about 7 hours out of it before that sense of urgency alerts you to the need for emptying.

The night bag has several feet of tubing attached. I haven’t measured it yet, but it’s long enough to trail across the floor at night and get tangled in Julia’s feet.

To attach the night bag you merely connect the tube to the tap of the leg bag and open the tap. To remove it you close the tap and disconnect. Remember to leave the soft tube on the leg bag. Simple. Even an idiot can do it. Most of the time. I’ve only had one emergency sock change so far, and one trip to root through the bin for the connector…

Anyway, plastic waste.

You use a leg bag for a week, so I’ll need six, which seems a bit of a waste. However, I don’t want an infection to build up so I’ll do as I’m told.

You have to throw the night bag and tube away every day. That’s 42 bags and about 50 yards of tubing.

I think you could open up the top of the night bags to make flower pouches. They already have eyelets for hanging and a drain hole.

However, Julia says no.

I’m sure there’s a way to repurpose the tubing too, but she isn’t keen.

So that’s 42 night bags, 50 yards of tubing and six day bags.

That’s not the end of the story, as they come in packs of one leg bag and five night bags. I need nine packs, in plastic outers, and at a ratio of 7:1 will have six surplus bags – three leg and three night. I’ll be interested to see if they have a system for taking them back into stock.

To be fair, the NHS is making big efforts in recycling and if I were to get an infection by reusing equipment I would moan at great length. You know I would.

However, I still feel bad about all this plastic.

We also have three pairs of crutches from various rugby injuries because they won’t take them back, but that’s a different story…

Hospital Food

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I have been in hospital three times – 30 years ago, 12 years ago and 2 days ago.

Thirty years ago the menu system served to me was the meal that had been ordered by the previous occupant of my bed. That, at least, was the theory, but subsequent experience suggested it might be less logical than that.

The conversation tended to centre on “operations I have had”, which didn’t really improve the atmosphere around the dining table.

The random nature of the menu arrangement became clear when, after three days, I left without once getting the meal I’d ordered. What I did get was mainly boil-in-the-bag scrambled egg, consisting of a square yellow block surrounded by water. With the addition of random veg and bits of fish and meat…

I will leave this painful episode with a quote from one of the convalescents, who actually seemed to like the stuff: “You don’t get food like this at home, do you?”

I had to confess that I didn’t get food like that at home.

Spool forward 18 years and once again I’m in the grip of the NHS. They have had my trousers down, tested my prostate and declared an intention to insert a camera into my bladder via a passageway quite clearly not designed for the purpose.

They had to take me in again after getting it wrong the first time – I’ve run them into one as they were only a few months apart. On each occasion they cancelled first time due to lack of beds.

The first meal was cold because we were at the far end of the ward. The only choice was fish and chips (bread-crumbed fish garden peas) because everything else had run out. There were five of us but only four fish, so they chopped the tail sections off and served them up to the fifth man.

They didn’t actually run out of food again in the next few days but we never had the full menu available or hot food. I did suggest it might be nice if they started at our end of the ward sometimes but they just looked at me in a snotty manner and ignored me.

To be fair, the food and system were both better than my previous experience.

Finally we have the latest round of visits – the December swelling and the events of Friday. More trousers, more tests and more cameras.

They have a new trolley, which keeps the food hot, and they seemed to have plenty of food. The choice is better and the standard is higher. The fish was better, it was battered and the peas were mushy, as is proper. It isn’t perfect, it tends to lack vegetables, but they do deliver it to your bed, and I did look forward to mealtimes.

That anticipation may have been due to boredom rather than the dining experience, but it’s definitely an advance on 30 years ago, when I used to dread the menu lottery and developed a fear of scrambled eggs.

A Tale of Tubes and Tears

29 Replies

The last few days have not been great, though due to the magic of blogging you won’t know that. When you’ve been reading about the trip to Wales I’ve actually been in hospital in Nottingham. On balance, despite the unpleasantness of a stay in male urology, I prefer Nottingham. There were no Kites, and no bilingual road signs, but the food was better and there was no problem with finding a toilet when you wanted one.

However, as a consequence of the operation and the bad night that followed I’m feeling subdued and tired, so I’m taking the easy way out and talking of hospital rather than Wales.

I quite enjoyed the first part of the visit, though I really don’t like spinal anaesthetics – being stabbed in the backbone isn’t my favourite procedure and I’m not fond of anything that involves putting my feet in stirrups whilst men with beards mess around with urological equipment.

The operation was OK, and being awake allowed me to watch what was happening and talk to people. The recovery room was also quite fun, and the nurses on the ward were very cheery. I even arrived on the ward in time for lunch (fish and chips followed by apple pie and custard).

They even, to look on the bright side, fitted me up with a personal toilet system. It has taken care of the problems I had with passing water, and it means that I can no longer be caught short as I have all I need strapped to my leg.

I was horrified at first when they told me I was going to have a catheter for 6 weeks, partly because it’s the sort of thing that only happens to old men, and partly because I was hoping to have everything fixed up in one go. It seems they want me back in six weeks to tidy things up and remove some stones from my bladder. Typical NHS, you go in for help with one problem and come out with another.

Tea (served at 5pm) was tomato soup followed by leek, chicken and ham casserole with mixed veg. I had the tinned fruit for dessert to try and increase my intake of fruit and veg. You don’t really get enough fruit and veg in hospital, which is strange (a) because it’s healthy and (b) because nurses are obsessed with asking about bowels.

The food was excellent, far better than when I was in 12 years ago. It was hot for one thing, which wasn’t always the case last time.

I could do a post on hospital food, and may well do that later. I won’t, however, dwell too much on catheters. I can be quite amusing on the subject, but it’s really more suited to the rugby club crowd rather than the sophisticated readership of WordPress.

No pictures today – there wasn’t much that was suitable to photograph.

Medecine, mistakes and a misapprehension

12 Replies

On the grounds of good taste I’m not going to go into detail about what happened at hospital this afternoon.

The facilities are good, the staff were cheerful and I was only away from home for 45 minutes (we can see the hospital from our house so travel doesn’t take long). Despite this I’m not very happy with the experience.

It’s hard to feel satisfaction when you go in for tests and come out without having the tests done.

The NHS did not cover itself in glory today.

However, my day was better than the man who was waiting with me. He was under the misapprehension that they were going to put the camera down his throat.

Today’s photographs are just a few selected from thousands…

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

Quercus Community with cake and mince tarts

Enjoying winter sun at the Ecocentre