Tag: NHS

Retiring Norwich

Retiring Norwich

Norwich is a retiring kind of town, the perfect place to hang up your boots. The micro-loft is the ideal roost, a lift just wide enough for a mobility scooter (I fancy a tiffany blue number with a harlequin shopping basket in fuchsia), tiny bills that won’t break the piggy bank and a small enough footprint to make light work of domestic drudgery. We’re spitting distance from the local quack for all those inconvenient ailments that get us all in the end. The medical centre comes with a handy on-site Boots for the pills and potions that will keep us going beyond our three score and ten (fingers crossed). And, when one of us does drop off the perch, the Co-operative funeral parlour is right next door (I hear they do a lovely spread, or is that spread you out lovely?) with the Samaritans opposite for the grieving widower. Should either of us try to hedge our bets by finding Jesus at the last minute, we’ve got a church on the corner. Amen to that.

Warts and All

WitchI noticed a little growth on my head beneath my slowly receding hairline. An ugly little lumpy bump popped up without warning. I didn’t know what it was. Best get it checked out, I thought. A childhood spent splashing  around in the tropical sun fleeing leeches as an army brat and four years under Anatolian skies squashing mozzies as a lotus eater and I could well be asking for trouble. My fierce (her word) German GP didn’t know what it was either. “Best get it checked out,” she barked and sent me off to a dermatologist. He didn’t know what it was. “Best get it sliced off,” he said. Four blue stitches, a neat little scar and a lab report later, it was just a wart. Not the viral kind of my carefree childhood days but the worry warts of my impending dotage. Wisdom warts Frau Doktor calls them. Witch’s warts I call them. I’ve already got a thicket sprouting from my nose, silver short and curlies and unregulated wind. What next? Gout?

Carry On Nurse

Carry On Nurse

IMG_20130429_105333Continued from Carry On Doctor.

The day of my arterial re-bore arrived and I packed my nightie just in case I might have to stay in overnight. With all the terrible press the NHS receives these days, I was a little concerned. Added to which, I’ve never been in hospital before so it was a uncharted territory. I needn’t have worried. The process went like clockwork. I was robed, bar-coded  and wheeled around like a kiddie on a ride at Alton Towers. Matron made me pull on a nasty pair of paper panties which were ripped off by a male nurse as soon as I was horizontal without so much as an introduction. My nether regions were painted in Domestos and deadened with a large prick. The keyhole procedure took a little under two hours and, as it was done under local anaesthetic, I was awake the whole time. The doctors poked about like a couple of boys from Dyno Rod, tracking their route in the monitor that was plugged into the enormous (and presumably very expensive) scanner. I chatted away to the delightful nurse who was charged to keep me amused and mop my sweated brow. When she asked me what I did for a living, I gave her chapter and verse about our Turkey tales and the ensuing book. The lengths I go to make a sale. It must have worked as she went away with ‘Jack Scott’ written on her arm.

Liam stayed around the whole time, peeled me grapes and provided a copy of the Independent to keep my mind off the tiny silicone plugs in my tender loins. I avoided cracking a joke just in case I popped like a Pattaya cabaret artiste. He was most attentive and I milked it for all it’s worth. After a few hours in an observation ward I was discharged, a little sore but otherwise in fine fettle.

I’m not really into the whole Turkey versus Blighty thing. Never have been, never will be. Chalk and cheese in my view.  I’m rather fond of both but for different reasons. I know people who’ve received wonderful medical care in Turkey and I know people who haven’t in Britain. All I can say is that my personal experience of the NHS has so far been exemplary. Even the receptionists were helpful. And what of the pharmacy of drugs I was prescribed by my Turkish quack? I now take aspirin a day to keep the stroke away (so no danger of erectile dysfunction for a few years yet) and a statin to control my cholesterol. As for the arterial bypass; that involves harvesting a vein from my arm. Sounds like a ghoulish Frankenstein tale and is a story for another day (unless I expire on the slab, that is).

Carry On Doctor

Carry On Doctor

Longer-term pansyfans may recall that I started having a bit of bother walking distances while we were in Turkey. The cardiologist at the local private hospital in Bodrum diagnosed Periodic Limb Movement Disorder. Apparently, I was running a marathon every night in my sleep making my little lallies tired during the day. I was prescribed a cocktail of blood thinners guaranteed to bring on early onset impotence and an anti-twitching drug usually used to treat Parkinson’s. My condition didn’t improve and so, now we’re back in Blighty, I had the whole business checked out at the StentNorfolk and Norwich University Hospital. I’m afraid the original diagnosis was a bit off target. A CT angiogram revealed that I have arterial blockages in both my groin and right thigh which won’t get better without surgery. A double stent will unblock my dodgy groin but the problem in my thigh requires an arterial bypass. My consultant looks like Dr Green from ER. It’s a shame I’m not under George Clooney.

Continued in Carry on Nurse.