As you know, a few weeks ago my new book was published, THE NHS: THINGS THAT NEED TO BE SAID. Little did I realise that a month later I’d be making full use of the NHS, and in particular my local A&E services. It led to me having to stay in hospital overnight for the first time since I was a small child (when I fell out my pram … but that’s another story).
My partner believes there are some things which should be kept private and tells me I shouldn’t detail all my health problems to the world. He’s probably right, so forgive me if some of the details which follow sound a little cryptic. A few months ago I discovered a lump. Like every middle-aged hypochondriac I feared the worst and went to my GP with not a little trepidation. She didn’t even have to have a feel of it to work out that I wasn’t about to die. Indeed, this kind of lump is something which diabetics are quite prone to, it turns out. She gave me a course of penicillin and as she predicted, within ten days it had gone.
Trouble is, last weekend it came back. I emailed my doctor on Sunday afternoon and she immediately came back to me and arranged to fax my local pharmacy so I could get a prescription first thing on Monday morning. That’s service for you. Unfortunately, though the lump got progressively bigger and this time it was painful. Last time it wasn’t. Anyway, by Thursday morning it was so painful that she advised me to go to A&E, so off I toddled to my local hospital, which as luck would have it is less than two miles from where I live in Pembury, near Tunbridge Wells.
The A&E at the hospital is certainly nothing like the one depicted in CASUALTY! Calmness ruled. I noticed that there were about 20 people waiting to be seen while I was being booked in by the very friendly receptionist. After about an hour I was seen by the triage nurse and there was about another 45 minute wait before I was taken through to see a doctor. She made a quick diagnosis and told me I required surgery under general anaesthetic. That took me by surprise and I was left to consider the implications of this while a nurse tried to do some blood tests. I say “tried” because no nurse has ever successfully managed to get any blood out of my arm, which is where they normally like to take it from. The nurse saw this as a challenge, but as I suspected, she couldn’t find the vein either. In the end she took it from a vein in my wrist. I was then seen by a succession of doctors, all of whom quized me on various aspects of my medical history. I think over the whole 24 hours I must have told about a dozen different doctors and nurses the different types of diabetes related pills I take.
I asked a nurse if I would have a room to myself as the thought of spending a night on a ward with others didn’t appeal at all. I’m not being snobbish at all, but I knew I would try not to sleep for fear of my very loud snoring disturbing others. I didn’t know this but the nurse told me that Tunbridge Wells is the only hospital in the country where all wards are 100% single rooms. However, all was not quite what it seemed, as the Short Term Surgery Ward consists of bays, around which curtains are draw. I was deposited in Bay 22 and told to get into a gown. And then the wait began. And continued. And went on. I was told that minor surgery didn’t shut down at 6pm, as I had imagined and that it continued through the night, but it may not be until the next day that I could be done.
My partner John then walked in. He’d been into the town to get me some provisions, including some pyjamas as I don’t possess any. Most important of all he brought an iPhone charger. If I hadn’t had my phone with me I’d have been bored out of my mind. As John left I hugged him rather tightly. I know it’s pathetic, but the thought struck me that if the anaesthetic went wrong, that could be the last time I saw him.
Anyway at eight o’clock the anaesthetist came round and announced I’d be collected in ten minutes time. The ten minutes stretched to an hour, but I’ve always assumed ‘hospital time’ was rather elastic at the best of times. Anyway, off I went on my trolley bed. I remember thinking how narrow the hospital corridors were and why had they been built like that, bearing in mind this is one of the country’s newest PFI hospitals.
So at around ten past nine they started the anaesthetic. I was determined to remember drifting off and going under, but of course I didn’t. I do remember waking up and was astonished to find I had been under for two whole hours. Music was playing and I didn’t like it. “Can’t you put on some Mango Groove?” I asked in a rather pathetic, weak voice. “Are they on YouTube?” asked the surgeon. “Yes,” I whimpered. And so my recovery was aided by listening to Special Star by Mango Groove.
So after a while I was wheeled back to Bay 22, where the lights had all been turned off and everyone was sleeping. And snoring. And in the case of the man in Bay 23 next to me, very loudly indeed. The whole night. Nightmare. So I put in my earphones and prayed I might at least drift off to slip for the odd minute or too. Better that than get gradually more angry at Snoring Man and have murderous thoughts.
They came round every hour or two to check my blood sugars and blood pressure. My blood sugars haven’t been so good in years! It helped having an insulin drip in my arm, I guess!
At around 7am the nurse asked if I’d like some breakfast. I was starving, having not eaten for 36 hours. “What kind of cereal would you like?” she asked. “I don’t like cereal,” I bleated. “Can I have some toast?”. “No, toast is banned in this hospital,” she said. “Why on earth is that?” I asked. “No idea,” she replied. I ended up with a completely tasteless egg mayonnaise sandwich with a smidgin of orange juice. Oh well.
“When can I go home?” was the next predictable question I put to the nurse. She explained that the doctors would be coming round at some stage and I would find out then, but she warned me not to get my hopes up. She reckoned they might want to keep me in for another night. Oh God. Not next to Snoring Man, surely. Anyway, around 10am a phalanx of doctors appeared, three men and one woman. I point that out because every single nurse and doctor (apart from the main anaesthetist and surgeon) had all been women. I had begun to wonder if Pembury Hospital actually employed any men at all! The doctors agreed I could go home so long as the nurses felt my “wound” didn’t look angry. They didn’t actually even look at it!
So an hour later the nurse came round and decided that no, my wound wasn’t red and angry and that I could definitely go home, which I did at 1pm.
Overall, I cannot speak highly enough of the care I received. Waits were kept to a minimum, everything was explained to me in language I understood and everyone seemed genuinely caring. There is nothing I can think of that I could complain about, apart from the egg mayonnaise sandwich, of course!
One observation to close with. I reckon around 80% of the nurses and doctors I saw at the hospital were not from this country. Every single one of them really cared about their work. They came from countries like Bulgaria, Iran, India and the Phillipines. The male nurse I saw earlier today when I went back to have my wound dressed was from Portugal. I told several of them I had written a book about the NHS, which led to some very interesting conversations. They were all immensely proud to work at the hospital and they put their all into it. One of the nurses reckoned English people don’t like to do the kind of work they have to do. That may be an over-generalisation but there’s clearly an element of truth in that. The NHS would cease to function without it’s foreign born staff, although I still think it is rather unethical for us to be taking medical professionals from underdeveloped countries which clearly need them.
