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Felt back on an even keel today and after a trip to the gym was actually full of pep. I was getting stuff done, including a fun interview with Catie for the audiobook and next month’s bonus podcast for subscribers on Acast Plus
https://plus.acast.com/s/rhlstp. Ally is wheedling out some good stuff from me and once again he was able to help me out when I couldn’t think what you called it when you let the air out of radiators. How did he know it was gleed if I did not know? I am a little bit scared.
The day took a bit of a turn though. Ernie has had a pain in his tummy for a few weeks - we’d been to the GP but they just gave us some Gaviscon and said that it might be to do with his stomach still being sensitive after he was sick a few weeks ago. He’s otherwise fine and it comes and goes, but a couple of things today made me a bit concerned and so I decided to take him to A and E just to get him checked over. I foolishly thought that it might not be too busy on a Monday evening.
If anyone was in any doubt that the NHS is on its knees, then try going to A and E. There was standing room only and barely that. A sign said waiting time for a triage nurse was three hours and for a doctor, seven hours. It was 8pm. Should I just go home?
It was chaos with no real clear sign of where you were meant to go to tell them what was up. Someone told me I needed to fill in a form for the Hello Nurse, but there wasn’t an available surface to lean on so I had to do it on the floor and then I stood in the informal queue of people waiting to say hello to the Hello Nurse. I was there for about five minutes when a security man asked me if I was with my son (at least I thought that’s what he said). No visitors were allowed so I thought he was checking up on that. Five minutes later he passed again and said “The appointment is for you, right?” And I said no, it was for Ernie. It turned out I was in the wrong place. There was a children’s emergency room, though his instructions were bad enough that I got lost in the hospital along with two other families. Finally we got to the right place and the good news was the wait for a nurse was about half an hour and for a doctor only four further hours.
Now we were here I was going to see it through though. Because I’d feel bad if I went home and things escalated. I was annoyed that I’d ended up following those other two families though - if I’d gone with my instinct I would have beaten them to the reception desk and saved maybe an hour or more.
We finally got seen by a nurse and then shown through to another overly air-conditioned waiting room (but I guess it would have been much too hot without it). The only instruction I got was to get Ernie to give a urine sample but otherwise we just had to sit and wait. I’d been so quick to get out of the house and only anticipated a wait of a couple of hours, so had had no dinner and brought only a bit of fruit for myself and a few snacks for Ernie. My phone was down to about 50% and I hadn’t brought a book or a computer. I had four long hours to fill.
It was way past Ernie’s bedtime already but he was enjoying the experience and then seemed determined to watch Megamind on the DVD player in the waiting room. Eventually at about 11pm he looked properly tired and I made two chairs into a bed and got him a blanket and he used his coat as a pillow and fell asleep. I still had a couple of hours to wait. This was so tortuous that I found myself praying that Ernie had some serious illness. If we got to the end of all this and were told he was basically OK then it would feel like the worst day ever. My bedtime had already passed too but I couldn’t really sleep, partly because I had to look after my son and partly because I was in an uncomfortable chair. It was just like the day he was born.
The staff were all busy and there was no information coming through, but there were a handful of ill kids in the room and we all just had to wait our turn. This is not a good system though is it? Kids shouldn’t be kept waiting til the middle of the night to be seen. No one should be waiting seven hours in adult A and E. None of this is the fault of the NHS staff of course. You know whose fault it is and who is trying to run the thing into the ground so their mates can get the money instead. All I know is that It doesn’t feel very safe to be in the middle of it. And I have to say that it works, because after this experience the kids would have to have a foot hanging off for me to come to A and E and even then I might leave it til the morning.
Eventually a nurse came to check Ernie’s heartbeat and temperature and he slept through it and then after 1am the doctor was ready to see us. Perhaps predictably my fears that my son’s appendix might be about to explode proved unfounded and he was basically OK. We have to keep an eye on him and see how things go, but in likelihood this long running problem will just sort itself out. As cool as it was to have fears allayed, the mountain we’d climbed to get here seemed a bit too steep and I was so tired that the drive home was probably the most dangerous thing about the whole enterprise.
Good to witness our broken NHS at first hand and Ernie seemed quite unaffected by the experience, but his tummy still hurt as we left, so we hadn’t achieved very much. And maybe a visit to the A and E at dinner time is a good way for me to stick to my diet.
I don’t know what the answer to the NHS situation is - beyond giving them the money they need- though they have a captive audience in A and E and in the evening there is nowhere to buy food, so it seems they’re missing a trick and could probably make up the short fall with a snack machine or two (but then if they raised the money they needed the snack machine wouldn’t get any use and so they’d be back to square one). It’s not good though and I can’t understand why we’re all sleep walking our way through this.
I comforted myself with the fact that it would make an entry for my blog, though cursed myself for not having my laptop with me so that I could write it while I waited. My phone did not have enough battery to risk it.
Sales for Edinburgh RHLSTP are looking OK and it's worth booking ahead for weekend gigs and some of the bigger names (if you want to see me talk to timkey I would advise you to buy sooner rather than later).
All guests and ticket links here. 
