24 June 2015 (Wednesday) - A Day's Sick Leave

The health watchdog NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence) have had a genius idea. Currently when your G.P. suspects there is something raher nasty wrong with you (the "C" word), you then get referred to see a specialist within two weeks. Said specialist then arranges an array of tests and says for you to come back when all the tests are done which is (in my case) some six weeks after the supposedly urgent referral.
NICE have recommended that the specialist doesn't order all these tests; the G.P. referring you does that, so when you see the specialist within the designated two weeks he has all the information to hand. It is a sensible idea, and apparently this should save about five thousand lives a year (because it currently takes so long to get all the tests done)
I wonder how many lives could be saved if people didn't have to wait for six months to get seen by the G.P. to get on to the system in the first place?

And with this rather cynical attitude I set off expecting an ultrasound-guided aspiration of the painful lump which has been in my throat since Christmas. Pausing only briefly to chat in the car park with an old friend I was soon on the table with my neck covered in some ultrasound-encouraging gloop....

About half an hour later with the side of my neck having been aspirated I came home and then took my dog for a little walk. I felt I probably needed it more than he did. At one point he seemed to be eating something disgusting that he had found under a footbridge, but dogs do that.
With both of us walked I got some KFC for lunch (I deserved a treat) and with that scoffed I set about ironing shirts; I'd not ironed any for over two weeks and so had a dozen to do. As I ironed I watched a film. I've seen "The Station Agent" before; but this time the lead actor seemed very familiar. Wikipedia told me that this chap is one of the better characters in "Game of Thrones". I thought I'd seen him in something recently.

It was surprising how much the morning's rather trivial surgical procedure had taken out of me; I had such plans for what I might get up to whilst taking advantage of a day's sick leave. In the end I didn't get up to much at all. With shirts ironed I thought I might work on a presentation for the astro club but fell asleep for much of the afternoon instead.
I did find time to mow the lawn. As I mowed I found myself getting more and more worked up about the letter that the neighbour sent me yesterday. He's asking me to complain about a tree three gardens away whilst his trees block the sunlight from over half of my garden and his clematis and roses are three feet over the fence into my garden.
On the one hand I might tell him to wind his neck (and his shrubbery) in. On the other hand it's taken ten years to get back on speaking terms...

"er indoors TM" came home and we walked "Furry Face TM" round to Frog's Island and then home for a rather good bit of scoff. As we scoffed we watched the second episode of "Humans" and the latest episode of "Thunderbirds". Both were quite good.
I'm off to bed now. I feel rather tired...


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