Posted this on Facebook earlier today. Wanted to put it somewhere more permanent…
The NHS is no longer on its knees. It’s flat on its back gasping desperately for air, smothered by heavy pillows of criminal neglect. I went into A&E yesterday at 11.30am (I’m fine, needed checking out for potential serious side effect of one of my meds). It was totally rammed, wait times of 10 hours showing on the screen, long queue at reception, about 10 ambulances queuing outside. I was triaged after 90 minutes or so, by a nurse who didn’t have time to do more than basic obs. The side effect I needed checking for was a hypertensive crisis – dramatic rise in BP accompanied by sudden slamming localised head pain, indicating a possible stroke. I explained this to her, she didn’t even do the basic stroke tests. I was breathing, my BP had come down to merely too-high levels, I was not a priority. I don’t blame her for that assessment – it’s an unusual condition and she didn’t have time or energy to look into it more, given that the waiting room and car park were filled with people in more obvious need of help. And Rach and I had done the stroke tests anyway, so I wasn’t too concerned. But if we hadn’t been aware of the need to do that, if I had had a bleed, I would have clearly missed the window for optimum treatment. She did give me paracetamol, which alleviated the headache somewhat. So I sat in the waiting room, head hurting and on the edge of autistic overwhelm, watching the stories of suffering unfold around me. There were several young men, probably homeless, shuffling around or sitting twitching in falling-apart clothes next to people politely but obviously not holding their noses. There was a man with some kind of developmental disability wandering round, collapsing and crawling every now and then because he didn’t realise his legs weren’t steady, happily chatting away to himself. There was a woman with a very cute baby, and a middle-aged woman who took it on herself to entertain the little cutie so his mum could rest. There was a man with chest pains who’d been sent over by the walk-in centre for urgent assessment and who’d been waiting for hours. There was blood on the floor, vomit in the toilets, and an identical look of calm desperate exhaustion on the faces of all the staff. The whole place was under surveillance by cameras and microphones, installed for 24 Hours in A&E filming, and we were watched over by young TV bods in brown scrubs, looking for juicy stories. Rach stayed for 4 or 5 hours, then I sent her home to nurse her incipient migraine. I needed the loo, waited till I’d seen the cleaner go in then made a dash for it. Got back to find the woman sitting next to me had put her coat on my seat to save it for me – seats were at a premium. After 7 hours the HCA I’d seen trying to keep up with doing basic obs on all the people waiting took my BP – still too-high but down a bit more. Rach came back with some much-appreciated food, and we sat and waited. Eventually, after 9.5 hours, an impossibly young doctor called me through, gave me a reasonably thorough examination, decided I didn’t need a CT scan (I think the wrong decision, taken in isolation, but I was too relieved that I wouldn’t have to wait for the scan and the results – goodness knows how long that would have taken – presumably the overwhelmedness fed into the doctor’s decision). She ordered routine bloods and sent me back to the waiting room, where a hospital executive was trying to make herself heard over the din. A message from the hospital’s chief operating officer – we’re dying in our boots here guys, we’re pulling in help from other hospitals but you can see what wait times are like and they’ll only get worse… if you could possibly find help elsewhere that would be much appreciated. Rach said she’d passed at least 20 ambulances queuing, all of which had to feed into the already overwhelmed department somehow. So I decided waiting for routine bloods to be taken, analysed, and the results to be communicated to me, was a waste of their resources, given that those tests weren’t relevant to the condition I’d come in with. I went to reception, waited for 15 mins or so while they, with admirable compassion and patience, sorted out an extremely scared and confused woman who wasn’t quite sure why she was there. They told me to just go home, didn’t have time to do the signing me out thing. It’s ok, they’ll realise I’m not there when they call my name and I don’t answer… Not convinced, I did as I was told and was home by 10pm, 11 hours after leaving home. I had a phone call at about 11.30 from a nurse, asking if I was still there as she needed to do my bloods… if the receptionist had signed me out that would have saved the nurse 5 minutes looking for me then phoning me…
On Wednesday Rishi Sunak spent £6000 taking a helicopter to a pharmacy in Southampton to announce that pharmacists can prescribe antibiotics for a limited range of conditions. Rishi, read the room, you shameless shyster. 1. Why Southampton? Why not walk down the road to the nearest chemist and save £6000 which could be better used in so many ways? 2. So many local pharmacies are closing or unable to perform at the moment, you’re simply shifting the problem not solving it. 3. Don’t encourage people to take antibiotics, you cockwomble. We’re already close to losing the effectiveness of the ones we have, and new ones aren’t being developed because, oh yes, there’s no profit in it.
I have slept badly. My head still hurts. I am scared for our NHS and their extraordinary workers. I am scared for our country, where basic health care is failing and education is failing and social care is failing and welfare is failing, while rich bastards try to persuade us it’s fine for them to be creaming off profits and avoiding taxes while throttling the services the rest of us need to survive, let alone thrive.
What can we do? Why aren’t we rioting in the streets? How can we demand better? How can we hold those bastards to account for their shameless blatant self-serving behaviour?
I hate capitalism. Any system that puts a higher value on money than on human life, health and happiness is morally bankrupt. Those who do well are those with inherent privilege, they’re the ones running it and it is not in their interests to change it. They at least used to pretend they gave a shit about the rest of us, now they don’t even bother. And we still vote for Boris and Rishi and even nutters like Truss and convicted sex offenders like Trump. What the actual fuck?