Ginger Transylvanian nurse
I had a rough spell last year health wise, it turns out that I have colitis, which I'd never heard of before but means my bowels will occasionally try to explode. Not the greatest news, when I finally heard it, but vastly preferable to the words 'bum cancer' that had been whispering themselves in the back of my mind for months.

In retrospect, I know that my treatment was mostly very good. After all, I'm still here and no longer in immediate danger of exploding for the moment. A couple of things really stand out, for good and for bad:

1. My family doctor, who had been ace up to that point, said she suspected crohn's disease, and that she could not treat me until a series of embarrasing tests confirmed it. Made sense, except that the waiting list for those tests was six months long, during which time I became very, very ill. Couldn't eat. Slept all the time. Eventually I couldn't take fluids, and at this point went to A and E because I really thought I was dying. When they admitted me, the hospital said I was far too ill now for the confirming tests, and gave me the steroids that my own doctor had refused to dish out, but which might have saved me several months of suffering

2. No vegetarian options in hospital. I couldn't leave until I would eat again, but they couldn't feed me. Thank god for visitors and the local Morrisons.

3. The lovely tea lady who sat up for hours with me that first night when I cried through a box of tissues, telling me that other people had the same symptoms and didn't die.

4. The ginger nurse with a Transylvanian accent who asked me about my eating habits. By this point I was size ten or smaller, weight drops off when your body won't process food any more. I honestly replied that I had eaten very little for months. She looked me up and down, sneered, and said "you will see dietician to find out why you are fat." Thanks love.

5. A ward containing two dozen people with tummy and bowel complaints, and two toilets.

The NHS does a really important job and saves countless lives every day, I know. Like my own area of employment, education, it contains breathtaking stupidities, bizarreness in abundance, and mostly seems to work because there are more lovely people prepared to go above and beyond than lazy, rude or just plain thick people. Cheers to all the b3ta medical types out there, from consultants down to cleaners : )
(magenta may, Sat 13 Mar 2010, 14:16, Reply)