My father found himself atop the donor waiting list, the only difficult decision being which of his failing organs they’d replace first should suitable substitutes become available. Highly experimental application of harsh combination therapy offered us the incredible present of being informed on Christmas morning that he’d die, and then later discovering that he’d live to see sixty because it turns out that sometimes, the drugs do work.
Wantonly heeding Touch Yourself Up In The Shower public service announcements charged me into the endlessly entertaining battle of Cutting Out Lumps In Case They’re Going To Kill You. A fast-track month or so of bureaucratic ineptitude and scalpels before I discovered that I didn’t have a highly aggressive form of cancer. Nor any other kind, as it happens, though I do now have a fetching scar in the shape of a cutlass.
You’ve Got A Virus, Go Home And Sleep It Off should’ve read You’ve Got Brain Damage Because You Had A Stroke And Our Emergency Procedures Are Woeful, Sometimes, But We’ll Put You In A Really Nice Private Hospital When We Try To Sort Out The Almighty Fuckup So That You Don’t Sue Us. No, my brother didn’t die, and he didn’t sue. He could’ve done either, or both, but thank fuck for luck [and when I write 'luck' I mean 'chance', or 'probability', or something] and thank double fuck for him not being a cunt and recognising that draining further resources from an already overstretched organisation would be destructive, mercenary and ultimately futile.
Seven hours of I’m in quite a lot of pain, actually before an x-ray revealed the catastrophic extent of the damage. Sometimes they don’t take you too seriously if you’re old, it seems. They stopped talking to my grandmother like a retard when she explained that she’d served as a nurse in the second war.
In and out in two days. Wow! They sure can get people healed up and ready to go pretty damn fast these days! My mother was really happy to be back at home so soon with two shattered vertebrae and a GP who wouldn’t prescribe painkillers unless she came down to the surgery in person. Clue: She couldn’t fucking walk. Or move at all, for that matter. Velcro and plastic were holding shards of bone in awful, stable place by virtue of agonising constriction. SHE WASN’T GOING TO BE ABLE TO SIT IN A FUCKING WAITING ROOM.
It’s both wonderful and terrible; incompetent and inspired. Above all, the NHS is necessary. So fuck these Emperor’s New Clothes campaigns. Why do we LOVE THE NHS? Why the fuck should we? It exists. We pay for it. Other things exist. Other people pay for other things, sometimes in other ways. I’m glad of it, but I recognise that it’s an organisation like any other: flawed. Calling it shit doesn’t make privately funded healthcare any better, in much the way that calling someone else dull or ugly doesn’t make you any more fascinating or aesthetically pleasing. Think it’s shit? Well, let’s have your egalitarian alternative. Think it’s great? GREAT. I’m not certain that means you love it though, unless you’re one of those cunts who LOVES Cheese Strings and puppies and The Saturdays and Fern Britton and tea towels and anal suppositories and disposable barbecues.
By the way, you’re naked.
All obama will do is outsource anyways. Just think about…
EDIT: Comments longer than my posts? No thank you. We’re not here to discuss *your* ill-conceived opinions.
I did not realise you had another blog! Love, love, love your writing!
Hope you are well. x
It’s familiar. My mum was misdiagnosed with a stomach bug. Following discharge from hospital after a prolongued stay, and continual pain, further diagnosis revealed terminal cancer. Frustrating and painful, and nothing to be done about it as correct diagnosis would not have made any difference to the outcome.
Having lived for several years with employees of the NHS, and hearing about the system to the point of boredom, it is difficult for me to feel much sympathy or pride. Like most civil organisations, there are many excellent people. However, they’re buried under a mountain of incompetence, lack of accountability, direction, and constantly shifting targets. The real tragedy is, I’m sure it could work, somehow.