Probably best not to watch if you don’t much like needles. You can tell by the way the patient grimaces just how painful it is. I am not entirely sure just how stabbing someone in the shoulder can be slightly uncomfortable.
NHS, very poorly indeed
I am not old enough to remember the NHS at inception but had a lot of experience of it during the 1960-70’s. There was one surgery where I had waited about a year for but that was seen as very exceptional at the time. Mostly my procedures were done within weeks or months of need. Several times I’d barely wait for a consultant appointment and this was at a time when the NHS had huge pressures by virtue of such now obsolete practises.
Never was I an inpatient for less than 2 weeks regardless of the procedure. A week of assessment prior to surgery and a week of recovery for normal for me.
My GP was certainly a different experience to today. He knew us, we knew him. This was in Dagenham, not a small place by any means but, we had the one doctor. We didn’t have appointments, we went when we were sick and we were seen the same day after a fair wait. Sometimes a half hour, others a couple hours. Several times I was direct to the hospital.
Wind forward and a decade or so back the ethos of the NHS was still in place, ‘Free at the point of need’. I mean, it really was. I say that, up until the Conservative (Thatcher) government of 1979, it had remained at 20p for much of the decade and then had year on year above inflation increases. Had it just been kept to inflation then we would now pay just £1.03 per item. Currently we are at £9.35 per item. If we reversed that trend then in 1979 we would have been paying £1.77 rather than that 20p!
Moving forward, and this is not political, it’s the facts of the time. Since the Labour party lost power in 2010 (11 years) funding in real terms and allowing for inflation has been cut over and over. Countless hospitals have been placed in special measures. Despite a range of targets, wait times have continued to rise in recent years prior to the pandemic. Staff retention has been low because of poor working conditions and low pay.
As such, the NHS has not been able to deal with both the pandemic and standard health issues. As such, many thousands have died waiting on treatment they would otherwise have got in good time. Cancer patients for example have died on waiting lists as under resourced hospitals have been forced to move over to emergency care for Covid patients. Despite opening hospitals at the start of the pandemic, the Nightingales, these were barely touched at all because there was not the staff to operate them.
A whole host of terrible political decisions over the last decade or so has directly and indirectly caused the deaths of thousands who should not have died, who, had measures been in place previously agreed in contingency planning meetings, they’d have continued to get routine treatments whilst the covid patients got the care they needed with medics wearing the correct PPE using available ventilators we were supposed to already have in reserve for just such an event.
Where are we now?
The reality for many if that they cannot see a doctor of any kind at all for anything other than a life threatening condition. Most routine surgeries are on indefinite hold. Many hospital appointments are seeing patients waiting months for a telephone appointment only to then go on another waiting list for several more months for just the slight hope of treatment.
Prior to the pandemic, GP surgeries and hospitals were given a list of treatments and surgical procedures the NHS would not fund, patients were told to go private.
I personally have experience of some of these:
A growth on the eyelid which gives blurred vision on the one remaining OK eye (still a high prescription) is seen as cosmetic and no longer available on the NHS
Vitamin D, prescribed by a GP as an essential supplement, is again, not something the NHS will fund and patients have to buy it themselves even though, not having it is likely to cause further complications in the years ahead.
A painful growth on the hand making all sort of things difficult is not life threatening and I’ve to wait many months just to get an ultrasound before it can be diagnosed.
A frozen shoulder has so far been left all of 2021 awaiting steroid injections after which the consultant expects I will need surgery but that too would be many months away.
All too often now the ethos of the NHS, the slogan which sold it, is dismissed as the NHS gets less and less funding and more of it is reassigned to the private sector.
I can see a point over the next decade when the government of the day declares the NHS to be too broken and invites in a higher level of private care with the NHS only available to those means tested to receive it.
You have to Laugh
Disability Humour
Whilst no one wants to be disabled or, ‘otherwise abled’, the reality is, some of us are and we’ve choices.
We either feel sorry for ourselves and decide that our life is over, it’ll never be good again and put one foot firmly into the grave or, we take a different approach.
Look, let’s get real, we can to an extent reduce pain, we can take away some of the other symptoms and yes, control some of the many side effects we are going to get from the things we take to get rid of the things we already had! Yes, we can do that but, whatever we can do, to whatever extent it helps, we do have to accept something.
THE LIFE WE HAD IS NO LONGER PART OF OUR FUTURE.
That’s not a negative viewpoint, it’s the start of acceptance and the realisation of one very important thing.
WE ARE NOW IN A NEW AND DIFFERENT PHASE OF OUR LIFE.
This is not a worse phase, it’s just ‘different’.
Think of it as more akin to a gender identity change … yeah, I know, not your think (maybe) but, in so many ways, that is where you are. You’ve been this one gender your entire life and then, your appendix surgery goes horribly wrong and here you are, a girl (or boy but not sure how that might happen from a slip of a knife – go with the analogy!).
After you’ve finished the legal stuff, how do you manage to now accept you can’t pee the same way? You can’t, you know, how do people say it? ‘be a real man’?
Well, you just do because Jack’s life is over and Jackie’s is just beginning!
OK, you didn’t get any of that right, too freaked out by the notion of losing your bits?
So, you have this diagnosis, you can walk but you’ll need some support. Your pain levels are really quite high now and it all seems too much.
So, you are determined, you are going to magically be that one person who is going to beat this, you are not going to accept being a failure, you are getting your life back and …
GOOD FOR YOU
But, unrealistic optimism only gets us so far and that so far is generally not as far as it used to be right?
LET’S REMIND OURSELVES OF WHEN WE WERE KIDS
Someone set us a goal, a target we had to aspire to perhaps, jumping a 3ft pole and, we tried real hard, we gave it everything so, someone decided that either we kept failing which was destined not to end well or, they lowered the bar so, here we are, time to:
LOWER THE BAR
Lowering our expectation is not failure, setting them impossibly high is failure, it’s the very definition of failure because it means we have refused to truly accept what can and cannot be done.
IF WE SET OURSELVES UP TO FAIL THEN WE SHALL ALWAYS FAIL
There is only obvious result from doing this, a life of despair.
HEY DUDE, WHERE’S THE DAMN HUMOUR?
Well, there has been some but you missed it reading about gender change, see, you’re still thinking about waking up without your manhood! (Just kidding but, are you?)
Once I accepted that the life I used to have isn’t the template for my life moving forward … hey, that’s a good thing to remember …
IF YOU NO LONGER FIT YOUR LIFE TEMPLATE, CHANGE THE TEMPLATE
Back with you, I went through some grief, yes, I mean, real grief for who I thought I was, all yourself that.
Look, with my condition I do some dumb arsed things.
PINBALL MAN
The amount of times I am walking down a hallway and my balance goes, my legs go wobbly and there I am bouncing from one wall to another all the way down. Hey, it’s funny! Seriously, it might start out a bit scary or even hurt but it’s like those times when you walk down the street heading toward someone in the opposite direction, you both just keep moving the same way to avoid each other changing nothing and end up laughing … you must have done that right? Anyway, it can be really funny at times.
You know what can be really funny? Those times I stumble over my words. I may mean to say:
“Nice weather today”
Yet, what I actually say is:
“Mice webber for hay”
Now, I have done this in meetings, trust me, two choices, laugh about it and explain “I am wearing these teeth in for a horse” or carry on like nothing happened and wonder the whole time if everyone else thinks I am idiot. Hey, they might anyway but, at least I am an idiot with a sense of humour, they could try it some time!
The other day I put two tin cans in the dishwasher and turned it on then turned around to find the cans so I could chuck them only to see the two cups I was meant to put in the dishwasher. Yeah, I could get annoyed about that and get angry that I am a total idiot but … it’s actually really funny, imagine watching someone else do that, you’d giggle right?
By the way, the image actually explains that apparently some people cook food in their dishwashers, who knew?
By the way, I am not going senile, my condition makes me so exhausted I just have trouble thinking at times.
HUMOUR GETS US THROUGH
Accepting our different doesn’t make the unpleasant side go away but, laughing really can make us feel a whole lot better. Just seeing the sunny side …. I left that typo in BTW because I thought it was really comical how I meant to type ‘funny’ but it got down as ‘sunny’ which somehow explains it even better.
Just as we feel better when the sun is out, we feel better when the fun is out too
INSPIRING
I should imagine each and every one of them said, at some point:
“I can’t do this, I am useless” and yet, look at them.
Each is embracing their ability and not living by their disability,
There are actors now with Downs Syndrome and autism, cerebral Palsy too
There are two above which may surprise you, Morgan Freeman and Lady Gaga both have the same as me, Fibromyalgia which in the UK is barely recognised as a condition at all though in the US it is better understood.
We don’t have to be that ‘out there’ to make our lives good, we just need to be the best us we want to be
Into May
As we head out of April
Stage one (of three) for the garden is now complete and as of May 8 we move onto Stage two which is the shed build.
Various bits are being donated which I love as it makes it all the more personal but, a hell of a lot of it needs to be bought.
Thanks to amazing friends and family the labour is free albeit for the cost of some lovely grub and gallons of fluids. It’s at times like this I realise how lucky I am.
As many will know, it is important for me to get this done because, my first attempt left me financially very short and the job was worthless. I lost over £3000 to crooks on it and despite a court win it’s really unlikely I’ll see that money again. Travellers (what I discovered they were) seem to be able to get away with just about anything it seems.
My deadline for Stage two is the end of June with stage three finished early in July unless we move a lot quicker on two. Stage three is a more relaxing small thought area for bonding and relaxing.
Passport Issues
Fair to say that the Philippines Embassy in London isn’t very good.
Dennis’s passport expired in February and the earliest renewal date we could get was April … 2022!
Our concern there was that his final UK visa application is due in June 2022 and he needs a passport for this process. It was a huge risk renewing it so close to the visa.
Thankfully, at around 2am the other night I was able to book a cancellation for July this year so, happy days.!
As we won’t really be able to have a holiday this year I have turned this into a little mini break for us in London.
Seat Ateca
Whilst it is a lovely car it’s also got issues.
Geography seems to be the biggest issue.
It will randomly switch the adaptive cruise control from miles to kilometres and vice versa. The effect of this will be, for example, deciding that the road is now 60kph and applying the breaks heavily to get down to 37mph! or deciding that the road is 70mph so, it converts it to kph and speeds up to 120mph rapidly! I know, it makes no sense.
The crap dealership in Northampton, Motorvogue (avoid them as they’re crap) told me effectively that I was imagining it and to go home. I took it to Milton Keynes Vindis and they were able to replicate the issue.
As yet, still awaiting a fix though.