Excuse me all, I am about to embark on a boring tale about my afternoon in hospital. I feel entitled, since the only thing that got me through it was thinking, 'Well, at least I can blog about all this later'.
Now, as anyone who has ploughed through my rant in a previous post about my two hour waits at the GP surgery will know (or any of my stories of life as a mental hospital inpatient) I have a bit of a persecution complex when it comes to medical professionals. I distrust them, which I know is not sensible. It is also counter-productive.
Because the thing to do when you have been waiting in the X Ray dept for forty minutes and watched everybody who was there when you came in, go through, and then you start watching the new people who arrived after you go in too, is - nothing. Smile sweetly. Not go and query it, as I did, because it gets you nowhere. It gets you in the same place as you already were, for longer.
Then when you eventually get back to Orthopaedics, you should not complain about the injustice of your treatment in X Ray. But I did. It didn't help. I could continue about my horrible experiences this afternoon, but there is really no point. Except to say, did you know that as part of a pre-op assessment you now have to be swabbed for MRSA - in your nose and your groin? Just thought I would warn you - I for one didn't see that coming.
Anyhow, suffice it to say that after three and a half hours I finally left the hospital. Although I have to go back soon to have both feet operated on. And I am resolved to be a model patient, for entirely selfish purposes, such as wanting to retain the use of my legs. Although I don't actually think they are that bad, these medics... Are they?
I can see why they behave the way they do. I have a friend who is a senior nurse at the same hospital and who recently volunteered for a couple of weeks in Haiti. When she came back to work she said she was sickened by the attitude of some of the patients, complaining about small things when she had just witnessed horrors they could not have imagined.
But I dislike hospitals. They make me feel weak, and helpless, and I become indignant when I am treated badly, or unjustly, when I know I should just switch off and read my book, or the paper, and take no notice of what is happening around me. Because I can't change anything. I do hope I never have to be sectioned again though. Because I fear I would not be calm and accepting any more than I ever was when I was ill. And I wish that was not the case, because I should have learned better by now. If anyone looked at the Helen Swan site I mentioned the other day (Natural Health Answers) you might have seen, in the Stress and Depression section, a long quote from Abraham Lincoln on how to live life, and it contains very wise advice, which I ignored today at my peril, along the lines of don't sweat the small stuff.
Never mind. Onwards and upwards. I came home to a houseful of sweet and concerned little poeple. I bathed my boys, talked with my girls, and had a very hot shower, a cup of tea and a large bag of Chicken and Thyme crisps (purely for medicinal purposes) and now I feel fully funtional again, and as close to rational as I ever am.
Good to get it off my chest. Thank you for reading. Dreading the Op and the six weeks' recovery at home with my feet up (bound to get the novel finished though!)
And the moral for today is: Stay calm in the face of frustration. This will work wonders.
X
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