I have been among the missing-and silent!-for two weeks. Bummer. I wanted to write, but got to the hospital and discovered that the T Mobile dongle doesn't work. So I will be returning it when I get home-as soon as I can walk, that is!!
Where am I? In the hospital-where else? After the twisted pervert park incident, I had to spend the rest of the week getting ready to go into the RNOH (Royal National Orthopaedic Hospital) on the Friday. My friend was due to come down on Thursday, so I didn't have a lot of time. I found myself rushing around like the proverbial blue assed fly-and still didn't accomplish anything, really. This means I finally learned the cost of procrastination.
I did say once that I am the procrastination queen...and, after all these years of panic, anxiety and stress, I finally am beginning to realize how much that has cost me. Between cancer (serious) and the knee (major, but just hideously painful - with a long recovery period), I've had the golden opportunity to reassess my life - and I don't really like what I see. So...when I get out of the hospital and I've recovered enough, I will be an ex-procrastinator!! I am determined; I need to dump all that stress.
Ah, stress...there is nothing like it. I came into the hospital on Friday, and had to sit and wait in the admissions lounge for five and a half hours before the room was ready. Apparently the current occupant wanted to have lunch and a shower before she left! That was, indeed, an omen: a sign of things to come. By the time I reached the ward, I was tired and grumpy-and discovered later that nobody in admissions (regardless of my request) had told my team I was there. They said they'd informed them-but they hadn't. So-no PICC line until Monday. And that was really, really annoying.
What was worse was the fact that, although I had a very small side room, there was no bathroom attached to it. I had to share. So, I went into action: I complained. Vigorously. And loudly. And I kept complaining until the nurses assigned a small toilet/shower room (on Monday, finally). A sign was put on the door, telling everyone that the room was only for room 14, and that for health and safety reasons, nobody else should use it. Not only did everyone carry on and use it, some people left little presents on the floor just to let everyone know they were using it! Nice. They also missed the bowl. So I had to watch where I stepped when I went in, and I went in armed with alcohol wipes.
The whole admission was a total disaster, in my view. I had to explain to every nurse and every nursing shift-and to many doctors who came into the room (I was a curiosity by this time), about CVID: what it stood for, that it is genetic, that I was born with defective genes, that I am not contagious, but everyone else is - especially anyone who is sick, even with the common cold.
I spent so much time talking medical history and CVID, I wish I'd just made a recording of it!! But I didn't really mind: 1 out of every 50,000 (20 out of every million) people is born with the condition, so it is reasonably rare. I even had to correct one of the baby doctors; she called it a disease, I said it is not a disease, but a hereditary condition. I made a lot of friends in the first week (not a bit sarcastic, am I? LOL).
I was poked, and prodded and irradiated, and on Wednesday afternoon, a nurse came in and said I was going to be moved into a private room-that was the rumor, anyway. So I packed. I was ready. Then at around 5:30, it was official-or so I thought. I was moving to the private patients unit. So I waited. And waited. And waited. And I kept pestering the staff to find out what was going on: nobody knew anything. No surprise there!! I felt horribly disappointed, distressed, and depressed. The thought of staying where I was, the risk of infection- too much.
Thursday morning a nurse came in and told me I was to be moved into the private unit-hooray!! But I didn't want to feel the way I'd felt the night before, so I just thought I would wait and see.
Bottom line? I moved into one of the two private patient wards, just down the corridor from the old NHS one. That was around 11:00. It is a lovely room (for a hospital, that is) with a private bathroom. I immediately relaxed; I felt safe for the first time in a week. And here is where it gets interesting.
On Thursday, the staff couldn't do enough for me. The catering staff came in the room with a pot of tea (a china pot), nice cups, nice cutlery, nicely presented. Then lunch arrived, and, again, it was nicely presented-and the food wasn't bad. I was treated as if I was one of the patients whose bills are paid by their insurance company (most private patients have private insurance; only a few have the big bucks needed to self-finance these rooms). Then someone let the staff know I was NHS-and everything changed.
There is a huge divide between the service provided to private patients and NHS patients. Catering staff-and cleaning staff-who are unskilled labor and probably earning no more than minimum wage, practically bow and curtsy to a private patient (just in case someone has the money to be self-financing), but NHS patients are treated like dirt. And that is the sad but absolute truth. And I am not dreaming this, I have seen it firsthand-on the receiving end.
I was told I had to choose meals from the NHS menu. Even though they are cooked in the ward kitchen, the quality and presentation deteriorated markedly-as did the service. I was served last, and always with a smirk and a bit of hostility: I am, after all, an NHS patient. So, yesterday, when a server was particularly rude, I said to him: "I might be a lowly, worthless NHS patient, but at least I have manners". He didn't know what to say, so he left the room.
And there is more. In fact, it gets both worse - and better. And my consultant, Mr. Skinner, is about to come onto the ward, so I will stop for the moment and get back to this later; perhaps I will have even better (or worse!) news for you by then.
I will preface all the rest by saying: it pays to fight for your rights. And I do mean fight. And that is exactly what I did!!
More to come.
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