« A diary of hospital life following a diagnosis of acute kidney failure »

Friday, 1st September 2006:

Big day today, they remembered they have a patient!

Started off with a blood test then, wonders never cease, I was finally taken for an ultrasound mid-morning. Only a ELEVEN days after a senior renal consultant said I needed one urgently… And there is a tale in itself. Sure I'd typed this up already, but here goes:

Stage: A waiting room full over patients
Scene: A radiologist comes out to speak to the receptionist, you whispers acroos to him.
Dialogue: In a loud voice: What do you mean, 'She's obese?' How big it obese? If she's too fat she won't fit on the table and I'm not scanning her!

And yes, that is a word for word quote - something that startling tends to stick in your mind, eh. He was almost as rude to me when during the scan, making several references to the fact I didn't have to come to my out-patient appointment because he'd done it now. Apparently patients actually in hospital have to wait to be discharged to come in for scans and operations, but then they'd be in-patient and, well, the mind boggles. The man had (has?) serious attitude problems. He also made some really obscure comments, asking if I was a Freemason and such. Needless to say I made a point of reporting him and the incident to the chief executive of the Trust for abuse.

Came back to the ward, barely got settled and they whisked me off for an abdominal x-ray, which went professionally well at least.

Fast forward to about 2pm and the ward manager says, and I quote: You've had your scans, you can go home now!
Now, it can take hours to write up ultrasounds so it was a given no-one had even looked at the result yet and here I was, being chased off to release a bed. Not even signed out by a junior doctor, just told I can go home by a glorified nurse. Funnily enough I refused to go and made a point of saying so in front of the entire ward - she stormed off and never spoke to me again, though she did conveniently find 'a doctor'. Well, one turned up several hours later and was more than surprised that I hadn't been seen in a week or longer. Actually he was horrified, but there you go.

Anyway, while the ultrasound showed no obvious obstruction the x-ray showed one of my kidneys was enlarged - assumedly the left one that's aching. (January 2007 and it's aching again, actually they both are. Not a good sign…) The creatinine levels are still too high at 250, down from over 350 but do seem to be dropping slowly so they'll monitor this for a few more days and if it continues to drop they will release me on Tuesday as an out-patient under Dr Schulz.

As an aside, my blood pressure is high. Never been high before, guess I'm getting old, eh! [ Actually it's a direct result of kidney failure, sends your blood pressure high ]. Need to lose a few stone for sure though, 40 to 50lb really.

Comment:
Ask most nursing staff and doctors, even the support staff like porters and you'll get the same barbed comments when you mention admin staff, or more specifically the vast legion of them tying up the NHS in paperwork and red tape. The fact the upper echelons seem to justify their (disproportionately) high salaries because of the wealth of experience they brought with them after working in a car factory, hypermarket or (I heard tell of one) a sausage factory…
Riiight. You supervised monkeys packing meat and all of a sudden you are an expert on managing sick and dying people, eh! Thus they hide their lack of knowledge of health care and medicine by hiring an army of bureacrats to spew out forms and red tape, thus justifying their existance with wordy reports … while the NHS falls deeper and deeper into debt.
By the way, not getting at prodution line workers with the monkey remark. Been there, done that, including permanent nights packing crisps. Anyone that's done such a soul destroying jobs knows exactly what I mean!

Sat stewing for a while after the doctor left and pondered having a website with the address NHS-Misdirect.co.uk (as opposed to NHS Direct). According to my notes it is planned as a venting off platform site, highlighting the scandalous inefficiencies of the NHS due to bureacrasy and administrative errors. Ditto for greavances vis-a-vis staff shortages and the horror stories of operations gone wrong…
You'll laugh when it's all over but, er, we meant to cut off your RIGHT leg and remove the LEFT testicle. Right, left, easy mistake sir. Soon sort that out, not to worry, we've booked you for another operatio Uuuurrrkkkkk!

After that I appear to have gone off on a tangent to form a new political party called the Raving Sane Party (as opposed to Raving Looney) with tough but honest policies. I wonder if the country is ready for a party that actually makes a point of never using shady Public Relation types, prefering to be brutally truthful with the population.
Unemployment rockets under us!!! We've corrected the unemployment figures of the last few governments and, amalgamating the various training schemes, benefits and divisions, there's actually over 12 million 'unemployed', closer to 20% than the 2.6% the previous government claimed. Life happens, deal with it!