With an NHS nurse on the front line: Corona. Was once a soft drink. Now? 🖕🏻

My blogger friend Gray is a staff nurse in Wales. Here is his latest post, unedited.

via Corona. Was once a soft drink. Now? 🖕🏻

 

Confined to home for 12 weeks!

At the weekend Petronela and I had a shock: we were told we should stay in our flat for 12 weeks!

We had already been observing a 2 metre distance between us for a week because, as a teacher, my wife brings home any bug circulating and had another week to go to be reasonably sure she hadn’t brought home the coronavirus. Maybe she did and we both had really mild symptoms but we have no way of knowing that.

Oddly enough the 12 weeks ‘order’ was not because of my health condition but because my wife has medication (a self-administered injection every two weeks) which evidently lowers her immunity even more than the steroids I take to boost the effectiveness of my cytotoxic ‘wonder pills’.

So lucky to have the NHS and ‘wonder pills’

I’ve commented here before, long before the present pandemic, how lucky we are to have our NHS and everyone who works within it.

My ‘wonder pills’ cost, I understand, about £2,000 a month if picked up from a pharmacy, even the hospital pharmacy, less VAT if delivered (how crazy is that?). Petronela’s recently introduced medication – something like a ball-point pen which, rested on a thigh and pushing the button, inserts a small needle to administer the medication – cannot be cheap.

Both are delivered to us by another great organisation; super reliable on both delivery and reminders when a delivery is due, it is called HealthCare Services Pharmacy, based in Featherstone, West Yorkshire. So far we have picked up our more ‘normal’ medication from our village pharmacy but now they will deliver it.

First hospital internment

Having never been in hospital before my first visit (to A&E then a recovery ward) some six years ago, I was of course apprehensive. In fact apart from the usual childhood illnesses I had hardly seen a doctor since 1957 (?), when I had so-called ‘Asian ‘flu’, which made me really ill for a couple of weeks.

Following the visit to A&E I had three visits for surgery, an experience  which made me appreciate particularly the over-worked, underpaid, nurses,  the healthcare assistants and all the backup staff and volunteers.

I’ve blogged about these experiences, and a more recent visit for surgery, in the past, likening my stays in a six bed men’s ward at Airedale Hospital to a ‘holiday camp’ despite the inevitable pain.

Returning NHS staff and volunteers

The thousands of retired NHS health care people offering to return to work was no surprise to me. Nor were the hundreds of thousands of people volunteering to help support people confined to home.

Our wonderful young neighbours

Before the call for volunteers was made our wonderful ‘upstairs’ neighbours, a young couple relatively recently moved in, had knocked on our door offering help and had already done some shopping for us. When I rang them yesterday to tell them we had been told to stay in the flat for 12 weeks and perhaps that was too much they said “no problem”!

Phil is working from home; Grace is furloughed from the dentists where she usual works and has already signed up to the ‘volunteering army’.

The good

So, we must remember the good which has come from the current tragedy.

• A firm reminder of the good in the human race

• A firm reminder that money and the acquisition of it is of relatively little importance once your basic needs are covered

• How good it is to have clean air (many have never experienced it before) and so how important it is to get rid of polluting activities which destroy our planet

We must remember them

I’m afraid the lessons will not be learned:

• Nurses and other health care professionals will continue to be underpaid and overworked

• Money, “the root of all evil”, will rapidly assume its place governing us all

• We will rapidly return to our polluting ways

There are others but this post is perhaps already too long, but I think for me it had to be said!

 

National Health Service – happy (?) 70th birthday.

I cannot let the 70th anniversary of this nation’s National Health Service pass without some comment.

We are extremely lucky to have it and it is one of the remaining things which make it good to be British.

I’ve always known that but it is only during the past five years, when I had a serious health problem for the first time in a life during which I hardly ever had to consult a doctor, that I really appreciated how lucky we are.

Rainbow over Airedale General Hospital, one of the places I’ve been looked after very well

Extraordinary people

It’s not just the service itself but the people working in it. I’ve been in hospital a few times during the past few years, first to A&E, then three times for surgery, and now frequent visits both to our local medical centre, four hospitals and one other specialist clinic. Scans in what could be terrifying machines seen before only in SciFi movies, things inserted where I never had imagined things could be inserted; I even overcame my fear of the needle, so much so that the quarterly stab in the stomach with what one nurse told me was more like a screwdriver (I’ve never dared to look) has become a relaxed jolly chat. One gave me a sticker declaring ‘I’ve been brave today’; it’s still proudly displayed in the campervan.

General anaesthetic

I learned that having a general anaesthetic was a surreal experience not to be missed unless necessary on medical grounds; on the other hand observing my ward bedfellows it was clear that epidurals were to be avoided. Another surreal experience was looking at my internal mechanics thanks to one of those devices inserted where I never dreamed I would allow.

The staff during every visit, on every phone call, receptionists, doctors, surgeons, nurses, nursing assistants, phlebotomists, cleaners, people bringing food and drink, volunteers bringing newspapers and sweets, medical secretaries – all were simply wonderful. They made the inevitable pain on some occasions not only bearable but forgettable.

Nurses at work

I’m so glad I had the opportunity during stays in hospital to observe nurses at work. Always clearly overworked and subject to bureaucracies which, as a former senior manager, horrified me – clearly designed to protect the institution from possible litigation rather than to protect the patient – were cheerfully overcome for the patient. So much so, I referred to my stays as more akin to a holiday camp than a medical institution. I experienced both private rooms in a private hospital, paid for by the NHS, and six bed wards in an NHS hospital. The first was superb but I preferred the companionship in the six bed ward. There was no difference to the care.

Junior doctors

I was proud to join a picket line of ‘junior doctors’ (a silly terminology – they are often skilled, experienced, well-qualified doctors). Talking to them it was clear that their first concern was not pay, but the danger that the present Government was selling out the NHS to private, profit-making interests.

Of course there are enormous problems to be overcome if the NHS is to continue to provide the outstanding care it does, not least the aging population helped to live considerably longer lives. Yes, some of the inefficiencies not in the control of the medical staff could be cut out but the amounts of money required will still be tremendous. I know that I’m not alone in saying that if a specific tax were introduced to provide extra money to the NHS I would not object. I’m certainly among the majority sick to death of the politics of both left and right preventing an acceptable solution.

Priorities

Then there’s the matter of priorities. When I was writing as a journalist in Romania I published a feature on what I called the ‘disease of poverty’ – tuberculosis. The director of a hospital I interviewed told me that if he had the money being poured into heart transplants – benefitting tens of people – he could eradicate tuberculosis, benefitting not tens, but tens of thousands.

So, on your 70th birthday, thank you NHS. May whatever or whoever protect you from the politicians and big business and, the usual Romanian birthday greeting: La Mulți Ani! – to many (more) years.

 

Bone scan, Hawkeye, goat curry and NHS spending

Calming fish in the Medical Physics department

I didn’t think I was going to post again until the New Year but, having had a visit to hospital yesterday (no, not a new problem) I just have to say something, and pose a question.

First, the staff – from receptionist to radiographer, they are truly delightful. I have said that in the past about the staff at Airedale hospital, where I’ve been an inpatient more than once and outpatient more times than I can remember over the past three years, but the same is true at Bradford Royal Infirmary where I was today. Not an inpatient,  just there for a bone scan, the fourth one I’ve had.

Jolly Scottish radiographer and Jamaican goat curry

Previous to that experiences, not on my own behalf but as a visitor, they were not happy ones. My elderly mother was the patient and visiting her was a depressing experience. When I had to to be taken to A&E (Accident & Emergency) three years ago I was, frankly, rather frightened from my previous experiences visiting my mother. However, because of where we live I did not and generally do not go to Bradford, only for the type of scan yesterday. I had the same jolly Scottish radiographer as previously and because for some reason this time he mentioned goat curry made by his Jamaican mother-in-law, he had me reminiscing about my visit to Jamaica years ago.

All this was before the scan, for which you must lay perfectly still for an hour or so while ‘Hawkeye‘ (that’s the name of the scanner, which made me laugh) looks for gamma rays from your bones, blood system having been injected with a radioactive potion a couple of hours before. Something new was after the hour I was stretched out on the ‘table’ he asked me to “sit on the camera” – to get a different view of my pelvis.

 

I couldn’t get WiFi working in the Medical Physics department where the scan was done so spent much of the waiting time in the magnificent new ‘reception’ area – bright, cheerful and more like a shopping centre (mall) – Marks & Spencer Simply Food, Costa coffee shop, newsagents and hospital restaurant – than a hospital. I managed to get WiFi there, partly in the restaurant eating an excellent leek and potato soup, so spent much of the time ‘chatting’ to a dear blogger friend far away.

My question

Which brings me to my question. When our National Health Service is so strapped for cash as repeatedly reported now, nurses underpaid and both patients and visitors ‘ripped off’ with crippling parking charges (luckily I can park some distance away and walk to the hospital) – should what clearly had been a very substantial sum of money be spent on the reception area? Maybe the respective NHS Trust had been as wily as the authorities in the Romanian city of Iasi, where commercial interests were allowed to develop a modern shopping ‘mall’ if they paid for restoration of the nearby magnificent ‘Palace of Culture’ museum. I don’t know.

I cannot decide on my own answer to my question. I understand the reasons for making such reception/waiting areas more bright and cheerful, and it certainly made the experience of visiting hospital better, but would the cash be better spent on medical facilities or staff? What do you think?

 

Fat cat Britain – Cruella in charge

Our real life Cruella de Vil

Returning to UK after the longest period away since I returned, in 2004, from living in Romania there’s so much to write about. Should I settle on a theme or just ramble away as is my wont? The latter is more my style so here goes.

Britain used to be the most liberal of countries and we thought of Germany as very strict and restrictive. Now it seems to have reversed. Stupid regulation after regulation governing everything here, so called ‘Health and Safety’ reaching ridiculous proportions, every child seems to have an allergy so cannot eat this or that (we’d have starved!), excellent recruits for the Nazi SS, unintelligent bullies, controlling train travel (at least on Northern Rail) and car parking, not all of course but a substantial proportion; teachers now expected not only to teach but to take over the role of parents in the most basic of  ‘education for life’; teachers and nurses bogged down with stupid form filling rather than getting on with the job for which they signed up, so leaving their professions in droves. Essential utilities companies, like British Gas (foreign owned of course), hiking their prices by stupendous amounts while rewarding their senior executives with massive pay rises.

We have a perfect Cruella de Vil leading the country using leaving the European Union (I refuse to use that dreadful ‘B…..’ word) as a perfect excuse to remove the power from Parliament and put it in the hands of a few of her lieutenants, so called ‘Ministers’.

Of course, everything is the fault of the immigrants, especially if they’re from eastern Europe or Muslim – I don’t think.

In fact, it’s the fat cats who are determined to get even fatter and roll in their slime.

Even (now this is going to upset 10% of the population) my previously favourite radio station, Classic FM, has sunk further into the money-making mire with repeated self-congratulation from the majority of the presenters, advertisers who seem to think the audience is made up of cretins. Their much (self) lauded 25th birthday concert, with a superb orchestra and chorus (the Liverpool ‘Royals’), was largely rubbish with no obvious reason for the bits and bats played. There was a super rendition of Bartok’s violin concerto by a young man, only 21 I think, and a premiere of a very interesting, exciting, piece composed by a young woman, only 23 years old, whose name I cannot remember but I’ll be seeking her out. With that fabulous orchestra and chorus why the devil didn’t we get, eg, Beethoven’s 9th instead of that mishmash of bits of this and that?

What prevents me jumping in the car and going back across the water? An elderly lady’s smile, sitting on a wall in my village main street and discussing the weather with me yesterday morning while waiting patiently for her bus.

 

 

Six good reasons I welcome 2017

Romanians in general are quite superstitious; Petronela is no exception and with that in mind the number 17 has become pretty significant for us. So, she assures me that the coming year will be good for us, because:

• It’s 2017
• We live at number 17
• In Romania we lived at number 17
• We’ll celebrate our 17th anniversary this year
• P was born in ’71 (deci 17 reversed!)
• Whenever P wins on Lotto, only ever a small amount so far, including New Year’s Eve, her selection includes the number 17

There are possibly a few more but I can’t bring them to mind for the moment.

Romania, Romanian doctors and medication

Towards the end of 2016 the year became better as a very poor prognosis for me earlier in the year was revised to be much better and new medication (thank God for the NHS; I’m told it costs around £2,000 a month!) has resulted in me feeling better than for two or three years (though I think that 6 weeks of Romanian summer and food had something to do with that too! I’d add to that, odd as it may seem, ending up in A&E my first day in Romania, when the wonderful Romanian doctors identified why long journeys were causing me a problem, so now I can take preventative steps).

I had a lot of problems getting in the ‘Christmas spirit’ last year, with the slaughter and starvation of children in Syria and the Yemen, to mention just two, let alone the events in France and Germany. I’ll probably return to this in future posts.

To end on a happier note, I can do no better than end with my New Year’s post on what I think is the best social media site (I’m excepting WordPress), blipfoto, when I ‘blipped’ a photo of our ‘musical corner’, where the tv sits. I returned to this wonderful community, which has none of the ‘crap’ so often evident on Facebook, just before Christmas after a long health-enforced absence (it’s based on keeping a photo diary). I don’t privatise my posts on this so if you’re interested you can probably find ‘realgrumpytyke‘ there.

The world stops for Vienna (my 1 January ‘blip’)

Little did Petronela’s younger sister (RIP) know what she was starting when she insisted that I, then a volunteer teacher staying alone in the school hostel in 1999, be invited to spend New Year’s Day with the family. We watched the Vienna New Year’s concert together, P and I married about 18 months later, and we have watched the Vienna concert together every year since that first time.

The concert combines two of my great loves, so-called ‘classical music’ and classical ballet, a love affair probably begun when I was about 7 years old, being taken to live performances at Bradford’s St. George’s Hall and the Alhambra by my grandmother after years of listening on the ‘steam radio’ and wind-up gramophone.

I think there was less ballet this year but it was great to see flashbacks to earlier years in this year’s concert, including ‘our year’, and to see students from the Vienna State Opera Ballet Academy dancing among the audience.

Thankfully no CCTV in our flat to catch P and I dancing/clapping to the Rodetzsky March in our pyjamas (the concert did start as early as 11.15am!).

PS. I see that unthinking I slipped in a word of ‘the other language’ – for me Romanian – above. I’ll leave it. We often do that in our conversations as I often cannot think quickly of the English word and P cannot think of the Romanian one! So our conversations are often a garble of the two languages. Very confusing for eavesdroppers.

 

Believe in rainbows

Less than a month ago, on a visit to Airedale hospital, I was given a relatively short time to get my affairs in order before departing from more than the hospital, on the basis of what scans had shown two years ago and the decreasing effectiveness of treatments. On Wednesday this week I was back at the hospital following several tests and scans since my previous visit.

It seems I might have a bit longer; the recent scans showed problems in lungs and liver had regressed to the point where “they are almost indiscernible” and bones are still clear. So the threatened chemotherapy will not happen, for the time being. The penalty? Even stronger attempts to turn me into a female – it’s a hormone therapy called Xtandi (enzalutamide) in addition to being stabbed with Zoladex (goselerin) every 12 weeks.

I was not surprised to see this rainbow arching over the hospital as I left. Seemed a good motive to do a post.

 

anaesthesia – haiku. Hernia repair.

Time travel from chat

to chat in another time

anaesthesia

---

 

One of the most interesting, and far from unpleasant, things for me about having fairly major surgery is the experience of having a general anaesthetic. I had my latest yesterday and the magical experience prompted the above haiku.

I am chatting to a couple of nurses and an anaesthetist – chatty, cheerful, communicative – in a pre-op room at the Yorkshire Clinic. Then I time travel. I am in some other place, chatting to some other person – a recovery nurse. Did I take just a microsecond to make the journey? The clock says it is more like an hour. Magical!

Hernia repair

I was having a hernia on my left-hand side fixed (‘open’ surgery) following a similar procedure on the right almost exactly four months ago, which I described in detail in a subsequent post.

I will not describe the most recent procedure in such detail. Suffice it to say that despite having the team in Romania well prepared to deal with any urinary problem (see post mentioned above), this time I did not need it. The post-operative pain was (and still is until pain-killers kick in) quite a bit more severe than on the previous occasion, but I immediately felt (and, I am told, looked) far better and this time I was able to come home only four hours after surgery.

To me the left hernia felt smaller than the right but the surgeon (Mr R B Khan) told me that it was, if anything, larger and the bladder was pushing through, which probably gave rise to the pee problem. That it is now back where it belongs will probably help with the other – prostate – problem too.

Romania trip

I hope that feeling so much better means I will be well recovered enough to make the intended major trip to Romania in the camper, and tackle Fagarasanul, in the summer.

The Romanian doctor who attended me last time – Dr Aurel Sbarcea –  was not on duty, doing his alternate fortnightly stint in Romania, nor did I see the Romanian nurse, Adriana, this time.

But, again, I cannot praise the staff at the NHS Hernia Clinic at the Yorkshire Clinic enough. They are simply great!

 

Hernia repair; an experience and lucky coincidence. The Romanians have arrived, doctor and nurse

What’s this got to do with hernia repair? Read on.

Last Friday I had ‘open’ hernia repair surgery. Subsequently house bound, even chair bound though decreasingly so, I have decided to set down my thoughts/experience with the operation as they may be of use to others facing a similar procedure. I also want to record the luck of discovering a Romanian doctor on duty at the time the NHS had deemed I should be sent home. I have to admit that I was somewhat anxious before the event, and searching for advice on the likely post-op situation, how long to recover, etc, much of the information was contradictory. With this background I had been warned by everyone from hernia repair surgeon to most acquaintances who had had the op that I should expect severe pain and to be ‘out of action’ for quite a time, even surprise from Germany that it was to be ‘open’ rather than ‘keyhole’ surgery and that I was to be discharged home the same day. I consoled myself that the pain could not possibly be as bad as that experienced last year, first waiting several hours for an ambulance then for quite a while in A & E with bladder retention; then, by the time a catheter was in, I was pretty much lunatic.

 

Back with Romania, classic mini and VW bay, Yorkshire, food, immigration and …

Grumpytyke is back, I hope fairly frequently, after a long absence, and I’m trying to decide whether to resume with the wide ranging subjects which I wrote about before – Romania, VW campers, classic minis, haiku, Yorkshire and food and cooking, and a few more as the mood takes me – or to limit myself to one or two themes. That might be difficult for me.

I just ploughed through emails going back to February this year – helluvalot of spam – and was glad to see a lot of ‘old friends’ still posting, though some seem to have disappeared in recent months. Apart from one short post in February ‘explaining’ my absence I haven’t really posted or looked at emails for about a year.

Me

Much of my absence has been due to a major health problem. I was diagnosed with prostate cancer, had my first ever stays in hospital and spent a while with tubes and bags limiting my movement. Hopefully it’s under control for the moment. I might have something to say about the wonderful overworked nursing staff in the NHS, but the often abysmal administration, management and systems, in a future post.