I was rather glad to see the relief arrive this morning;
last night’s shift had been rather hard work. My watch resets at midnight and
I’d walked over five thousand steps between midnight and eight o’clock. My
daily target is six thousand, and some days I don’t get to it.
Ironically having found the “Operation Brock”
stupidity had been removed on my way to work last night, five miles of the way
home had been reduced to only two lanes for absolutely no reason that I could
fathom.
My piss boiled as I drove home. There was a lot of air-time
devoted to “Martha’s Rule”; a
suggestion that patients should be able to request a second opinion and review
of the case if a loved one’s clinical condition is deteriorating or not
improving as it should. As the talk went on there was a lot of stabbing the NHS
in the back and airing of all of its faults and failings.
At no point did anyone suggest that “Martha’s Rule”
is already in place; people *can* currently request reviews and second
opinions. But why would anyone point this out as it would ruin a perfectly good
story.
This is typical of the BBC’s attitude to the NHS at the
moment; slow to praise and quick to censure. Compare this to only a few short
years ago when the BBC was instrumental in having us all on the doorsteps
clapping for the NHS like things possessed.
Once home I took myself to bed for the morning. All three
dogs came with me, and after a little fight for bed space I was soon asleep.
I woke three hours later, put a load of washing in to scrub
and then had my usual root round the Internet. I started off with sending out
birthday wishes… Every morning Facebook tells me whose birthday it is (provided
that person has told Facebook when their birthday is), and several times
each week I’m presented with a “friend” about which I’ve heard
absolutely nothing since Facebook last told me it was their birthday last year.
I had two friends with birthdays today; one with whom I work, and one I’ve not
seen or heard from for at least five years. I *love* Facebook in that it
helps me keep in touch with people, but that presupposes that people will use
Facebook to interact. Most people don’t. I know so many people who comment to
me about all that I post to social media but never actually post anything
on-line themselves (not even a “like”).
There were a lot of “back to school” photos this
morning; bearing in mind what a shambles Swadelands School was all those years
ago I don’t miss “back to school” at all.
I had an email cancelling Friday’s dental appointment. The
dentist annoys me when they do that. They’ve not been so bad lately, but back
in the day I think it fair to say they cancelled two out of three appointments.
I tried to phone them; the phone just rang and rang. I gave
up after half an hour; do they close for lunch?
My plan for today had been gardening. Over the years I’ve
tried to create a very low maintenance back garden, but sadly “very low
maintenance” isn’t the same as “no maintenance”. My plan was to
prune the tree at the end of the garden and to tidy up the overgrowth pouring
over the fence from not-so-nice-next-door. I got some of the tree
pruned, and some of the overgrowth hacked back. But after a couple of hours I
began to wilt, so I ran round with a watering can and settled down in front of
the telly and tried phoning the dentist again. After half an hour I gave up and
walked down the road to the surgery.
It was mayhem.
I joined the queue and eventually got to the front. After a
little chatting with a very harassed receptionist it became clear that the
private dental plan I took out (at their insistence) was working against
me. Back in the day the entire practice went with Denplan and so if my dentist
was on holiday I could see another. But with the passing of time they’ve now
only got one Denplan dentist and he only works Fridays. I re-booked the
appointment, came home and phoned the Denplan people who tell me they’ve got
three Denplan dentists at the surgery I go to, so seeing someone else shouldn’t
be an issue. I phoned the surgery again and left a message asking the practice
manager to phone me to talk about this…
I wonder if they will phone tomorrow – they didn’t today.
And
talking of dentists, “My Boy TM”’s dog Ro-Ro went to the dog
dentist today. The poor little thing has had fifteen teeth taken out…
No comments:
Post a Comment