Chateau Random is turning into a bit of a field hospital at the moment. Both of us are now properly afflicted with the lurgy. They say to feed a cold and starve a fever and while none of us run a fever, we're only perfunctorily feeding ourselves and each other because we can hardly taste anything through the layers of phlegm.
Had an interesting experience with the NHS recently. I am still on the diagnostic treadmill with regard to my December/January affliction. Now that I have a cold, things have flared again though not as badly as before. But enough to ensure that my fat ankles no longer fit into my new funky Irregular Choice shoes whereas before my cold they did. I was seen by a specialist over a month ago and then heard nothing despite the promise of a letter and a referral on for further tests. Some time ago I thought I'd check with my GP practice who had had the specialist's letter through on the day of my appointment -- but had not thought to ring me. They thought it was perhaps about time to prod the specialist again about that referral. So I prodded via email. A few days later I get a phone call from a lovely scatty-sounding lady from the NHS asking if I wanted to take a short-notice appointment as they'd had a cancellation. I was delighted, of course I would! What a question. Oh, she said, you're the tenth I've rung -- no-one wants to take it up! I found that hard to believe: the appointment was for a weekend clinic after all so few would be working, surely.
So I was given the appointment and duly turned up at the hospital. When I finally managed to grab the attention of the duty nurse -- it's true what they say about chatting nurses, by the way, but because she looked SO MUCH like my grandmother at the age of 55, I forgave her -- it turned out no-one knew who I was or expected me to be there. I almost expected that to happen, somehow. I pointed out I'd had a phone call, otherwise I wouldn't be here and surely I would be seen? I wrote down all my details and handed them to NurseGran, who scuttled off, tut-tutting about having to "go to the library to get my file". What file? The previous specialist in the same wing only downstairs had taken x-rays and had been looking at them on his computer. What happened to that pdf? Never mind -- the nurse not only looked like my gran, she even acted and sounded like her, the same barely restrained bossiness combined with passive-aggressive frazzlement -- "We're running FOUR clinics concurrently -- there's a lot on..."
In the generic waiting room, the usual panoply of patientry at various stages of ill health. In the corner a large three-generation family made up largely of large women, with younger men lounging on the margins with their feet on the coffee tables. In my corner a trim mid-fifties man and his wife, the former had survived two heart attacks and was now being sent through a number of fitness tests. Another nurse came to discuss his needs with him, in full earshot of everyone, and alarmingly, it turned out, something quite crucial had been recorded wrongly -- an examination he had yet to undergo had been recorded as "patient cancelled the appointment". So presumably the Matrix had been talking to itself again without letting the patient know. The wife was immediately onto it and the nurse didn't put up a fight but God help you if you're on your own or too ill or demented to grasp what's going on.
My turn came quite quickly after NurseGran had proudly declared "You're mine!" I was ordered to take off my coat and have my height measured.
"I could tell you my real height," I said, spotting that she'd recorded my height with an extra 3 cm added.
"Turn around and hold your foot up," said NurseGran. So I did. She measured my heel and deducted 3 cm. Then I had to sit in the weighing chair. She didn't deduct the notional weight of clothes and shoes from the offensive fantasy number on the display! Frechheit!
The result of this was that my blood pressure and pulse were more elevated than usual.
"It's normally really low when I measure it at home," I told NurseGran, "and I'm ill with flu."
NurseGran took absolutely zero notice. Perhaps it wasn't that high after all.
"Go sit down at the bottom of the corridor."
The examination by the specialist was primarily verbal but I did come out with the reassurance that what I had needed to be monitored but that it was self-limiting after a year, perhaps two. My blood test results had also come back without any inflammation markers and the rest was all wonderfully average and middle-of-the-road and healthy. To me that was excellent news. To nail down the diagnosis, I'm going to get a CT scan soon and have to do various function tests -- all as required by the pathway for this particular condition. I was told 2, maybe 3 weeks, so mentally I'm preparing for 5. I couldn't help thinking that back in Germany all of this would have been sorted out inside a month with the clock starting from the first fat-ankle visit to the GP in December. But my contacts tell me it's getting just as bad over there now too so I'm grateful that here at least, my health care is free at the point of use and the nurses look and talk like my gran.
On my way out I bought cappuccinos and muffins and noticed a fundraising poster. Some pretty essential-sounding machine costing £200,000. The hospital needs it and could ordinary people donate towards it? I'd have thought their car parking fees would pay for that particular shortfall in less than a week. Also, I'm a little old-fashioned: my taxes are already a "donation", and I can't help thinking that properly outsourcing the weddings and funerals of prominent members of British society would free up portions of our taxes which would then cover whatever health-preserving machinery the NHS needs. But like I said, I'm old-fashioned, and old, and foreign to boot, so what do I know. I don't even know the 'Ding Dong' song (and would never know it if all I listened to was Radio 1) so when I played it on Youtube instead to find out what all the fuss was about, I realised it was the ditty from the Casablanca-parody restaurant scene in Naked Gun 2 1/2: The Smell of Fear:
Jane (Priscilla Presley): Sam, play our song... just one more time.
Sam (James Gilstrap): Of course. Ding dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch? The wicked witch! Ding dong, the witch is dead! Which old witch?
Frank (Leslie Nielsen): Er... Sam... Sam... that's enough. Play... er... play the other one. Please.
Priceless!
Today, it was a balmy 14 degrees outside, even sunny, at least for two hours, then it started raining. I was feeling very rough but felt even worse inside than outside in the fresh air so used that energy to:
* empty the stove ashpan
* saw up our evening's firewood
* empty the wheelbarrow full of leylandii shreddings over the Goth bed
* use the lopper to fill 3 more sacks' worth of kindling from the hedge and the twiggy crap that had been lying around our garden for a year
* scratch the leylandii cuttings together and fork them into one giant pile behind the compost daleks
* sweep the mounds of sawdust and ex-jasmine tendrils together and off the patio. Patio now looking a little tidier.
I'd managed to guilt-trip OH into stapling the lining of the last planter out front but then he tapped out -- "no lung capacity" -- and collapsed on the sofa. My relentless activities outside through prompted him to tidy up downstairs, hoover the living room and take the compost out.
Inside, the fire was on and even though I had some work to do, I could at least do it from the sofa and watch Silent Running followed by Lewis with one eye, sneezing violently every 30 minutes, blowing my nose every five and coughing every 10 minutes. Colds suck.
But there is also my allotment pharmacy. Today, for example, I humidified the living room with chamomile water placed on the stove. And I've just made myself a steam-inhalation brew of home-grown chamomile and thyme. It unblocked one nostril, which I suppose is something. I've even found that dreadful but effective fennel-liquorice cough tea in one of the Russian shops around here. The packet is in Lithuanian but I'd recognise the aroma anywhere.
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