For all its challenges, the NHS is still pretty darn good, as my experience shows
MY column last Monday highlighted what I considered was the high cost of personal health insurance. It is always going to be simple to enter that area of debate when you feel that you are, as my grandfather would say, as fit as a butcher’s dog. As I keyed in the column, that is exactly how I felt. Five days later the situation had changed… dramatically as it transpired.
I started to feel not good on the Thursday morning before the bank holiday weekend. It is not often I want to visit the doctor, but with my leg both very swollen and hurting somewhat, that was where I considered I should pay a visit.
However, given the difficulty contacting the surgery I decided perhaps I might survive a few days more.
That night the pain said I had maybe made a mistake and next morning we hit the phone buttons.
I cannot remember the length of the queue, but when we got through the surgery was brilliant and either had some space or made an inspired guess as to what was wrong with me.
I perhaps should have realised that something more serious was wrong when the original appointment of 3.15pm was brought forward to 1.30pm, but I was just keen to see the doctor.
I will readily accept he was pretty good. After the usual temperature and blood pressure checks he felt my leg which I had assumed had been bitten by some flying beast that haunts our garden…but he very quickly said I needed to go to hospital! I now was scared and even more so when asked to go back to the reception area while he phoned the Royal Derby. I assumed this meant a journey in an ambulance – something that I have only ever had once before – and was trying to remember where my will had been filed!
As usual I had presumed wrong and he simply made an appointment for me to have an ultrasound scan that afternoon.
It was about 2.30pm when I started the long walk to the ambulatory area. This used to be close to the main entrance, but has now been moved to the other side of the hospital.
As I had never heard of this place before, I suspect it has been relocated as Covid is dealt with in A&E, but yet again that is but a guess. Here, I had both temperature and blood checked - to see if they had changed in the last hour, and then an attack on my arm for blood samples – I still have the large bruise!
Then the chief came in to tell me the scan appointment for me would be 4.15pm, and I was directed all around the hospital to the clinic for the scan. I still had a very painful leg and this walking exercise was not making it feel any better.
I got to this clinic about 45 minutes early but was seen before my appointed time. The operator was pleasant and chatty so I worked out I would probably survive the night…but it is not until I got back to the ambulatory bit that I was told that the test was positive and I had a blood clot.
Time to go home was duly postponed and I had a long interrogation from the doctor, a trip to x-ray and then back to the ambulatory section.
There was to be still a trip to the pharmacy before another walk to ambulatory to at last be released with what I now know to be deep vein thrombosis – I do not know where it came from but I cannot blame the little critters flying around in the garden!
My experience shows the NHS is still pretty good, as is the Royal Derby so now I am going to relax and let nature and the drugs I have do their job.
I assumed this meant a journey in an ambulance and was trying to remember where my will had been filed!