So sick of our ailing hospital and cliche-ridden health minister rhetoric

THE minister was here and so was the novena. I have no way of knowing how long each will last in the memory.

We forget pain, hard as that may be to believe, but we forget pain. It lands and hides somewhere in the deep recesses of the mind. I had ‘dry socket’ once and it nearly did for me, the pain lasted for nearly three weeks. (Dry socket happens when you don’t do exactly what your dentist tells you to do after an extraction.)

I swore I’d never forget the pain. Why would anyone want to remember pain and even swear to themselves that they would never forget it? I didn’t remember the pain at all — but I did remember the misery.

We remember misery because sometimes we want to. We collect it and we store it in a safe box at the back of our minds and every now and then we drip-feed it to ourselves and to those around us.

The minister for health was here and so was the novena. It’s a no-brainer to have the novena slap bang in the middle of Galway, where the streets are as narrow as they were in the 16th Century. Guess what, we have just been lauded with another award. Galway has just been named the most congested city in Ireland. The survey was conducted by INRIX, a provider of traffic information worldwide.

Why don’t they have the novena once or even twice a day in the racecourse instead of eight or nine times a day in a car-logged city. They could have a large tent or bespoke tarpaulins from Done Deal or Woodie’s at the racecourse to protect people from the elements. Free buses from Galway even, but get that bloody novena out of the city for the love and honour of God. Do you know why I won’t go to hell for saying that? Because there is no hell. There is only traffic and a minister for health who bypassed us for months.

Should we now be grateful for his visit? A lot of patients who were awaiting discharge had to wait four to five hours until the minister had left the building. What good did it do to have the minister come to Galway? Should we have kowtowed in gratitude because the Health Minister remembered that there is a place called Galway?

Rag week was on as well (although it was only on for seven days as opposed to nine days for the novena) so it was gawks-ville versus Jesus loves you, and the minister has landed.

When you become invisible, you can see out but no one can see you. This is exactly what happened to a patient with stage-four cancer during the week in UHG. He became invisible. He was too weak to walk to the toilet, so he asked for a bottle which was supplied to him. The only problem was that it was still there two days later full to overflowing. He asked me not to mention his name, but he is a real person. This is not a “I met a man with two pints” story. This is not a story. It’s someone’s reality.

When the minister came to the hospital there was a photo-shoot to advertise the Saolta cancer care annual report. The minister didn’t know about the invisible man with stage-four cancer who was mortified in case someone would knock over the urine vessel that lay by his bed for two days.

When the minister did speak he used knackered rhetoric — like ‘muchneeded investment’ and ‘need to be looked at’, ‘new A&E being designed’ etc.

We’ve heard all this before. It reminded me of Dante’s line: “There is no greater sorrow than to recall happiness in times of misery.”

The minister went on to tell us the waiting lists in Galway were some of the worst in the country. Ah hello, we knew that also. Internal hospital documents revealed that 2,500 patients waited over 24 hours to get treatment. That was in briefing material prepared for minister at his December visit that never happened.

In my opinion, his visit was a total waste of time. Why didn’t he come unannounced? The visit was shouted from the rooftops. There was nothing but press releases and news items on local radio about his arrival. The whole schmaltz around the visit was reminiscent of juvenile excitement at seeing new TV programmes starting in the 1970s — like Get Smart or The Virginian or Daniel Boone. The city was flapping with expectation — but all we got was The Rowan and Martin’s Laugh-In or was it Mr Ed The Talking Horse? As for it staying in the memory, I don’t think so, the whole thing was eerily vacuous.

If he came unannounced and walked through the wards he would have got the real picture of a crumbling, overcrowded hospital. If he walked around St Enda’s ward (aka the gulag or, as a woman who has just spent a week there called it, the last outpost). He would have got the real picture of mayhem.

The first thing anyone will tell you in St Enda’s is, don’t touch the TV remote control, it’s full of nasties that would kill Rin Tin Tin if he called in. The hospital should be turned into a cats and dogs home because it is not fit for purpose.

It was all a step back in time or put another way, a backward step. What we got was a staged version like you would see in the movies when rich patrons came to view an orphanage.

All the good toys and the sparkle was brought out. When the show was over the shabby returned and that aching gulf for change remained.

What a wasted opportunity. I didn’t see any nurses in the photo shoot, the ones keeping that hospital together.

The World Congress on Women’s Mental Health will be held in the RDS from March 6-9. More than 800 delegates from across the world will be there.

The congress will explore the link between gender inequalities and women’s mental health. The event is hosted by the National Women’s Council of Ireland and Trinity College Dublin. I’ll see you there on Monday, March 6 around 4pm.