After surviving most of life with minimal contact with the NHS over the last 3/4 years I have gained a wide ranging knowledge of the in and outs of all the joys it has to offer.
First we had endless fun when my daughter developed abdominal pain and bleeding when she was 17, initially it was thought to be kidney stones. The hospital was very efficient checking out this but when it was shown to not be kidney stones we were pushed from pillar to post with no specialist prepared to take any responsibility for finding out what the cause was...or helping her deal with the extraordinary levels of pain she was experiencing. We even had one specialist draw us a picture of a kidney...not a good drawing I would have had to do better when I did O Level Biology...to explain that he only dealt with 'this part of the kidney'...yes he seriously did...so my daughters problems were nothing to do with him.
My daughter was treated with indifference, unpleasantness...if she wasn't cured she wanted to ill and she was messing up the hospital, and so on. She admitted to hospital twice so the bleeding could be monitored but nothing was checked either time. I could go on but basically the NHS did not cover itself with glory...one specialist said he was unwilling to do tests to discover where the blood was coming from as the tests would be invasive for a 17 year old. No concerns about leaving her in extreme pain, bleeding, but worries about testing! No though of actually asking what my daughter wanted! After all she was just a patient and therefore not a real person.
Anyway that is just background to my story about why the NHS is a bureaucratic nightmare and is, in my opinion, beyond saving.
I have a Mirena and as I am too old now to need contraception it seemed a good time to get it removed. The story now begins. In July 2014 I had an appointment with the nurse at the GP's practise to remove the coil. She couldn't find the strings in spite of what felt like good rootle around with some very cold tools. I was told |I would be referred to a gynaecologist for it to be removed. I got an appointment for the hospital in October...no rush obviously. The gynaecologist then had another good rootle around to discover...what a shock...that the strings couldn't be found. At this point general farce began.
I then need another appointment at a different hospital to have a scan to check the Mirena was still in situ. This was duly done and I then had to wait some more for another appointment with the gynaecologist to tell me the Mirena was still there and I would need ANOTHER appointment with yet another department to get the thing removed. Talk about a bureaucratic monster! To add to the general mess my next appointment was made to the wrong department and I only discovered this when I turned up! Oh what joy...my next appointment was cancelled on the day I should have gone. No reason given but I wasn't too upset as I was full of cold and every time I coughed I leaked, as old ladies do, so an internal examination wouldn't have been fun. Six months since my initial appointment I am still waiting to get rid of the damn thing.
Heaven only knows what all this messing around has cost the NHS...it won't have been cheap and for what? I am still waiting for what I fondly imagined would be a quick appointment with a scan and the Mirena removed in one go.
It comes as no surprise to hear that the NHS is running out of money...any organisation that can piss away money as fast as they has done over a very minor matter can hardly be considered to be efficient! I am also not surprised to hear they are short of staff...the staff are all doing pointless appointments that achieve nothing, so obviously they have no time to actually, I don't know, treat ill people!
I am having similar problems getting a repeat prescription sorted. I send in the form and its returned saying I need blood tests before I can get the prescription. I give the dates I had the tests done and the date I saw the GP about the results and got my annual 'you should loose weight' lecture. No record of either so I have to waste my time and the GPs time going in to get a repeat prescription I should have had without all the endless messing around! What a total mess...supermarkets are not doing what customers want so are having problems and cutting prices to entice us back. The NHS doesn't do what any of us want and just get money thrown at it and the problems get worse, not good!!
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