Sunday, February 08, 2004

The elderly! Mumsy is in hospital. She seems to be okay, but chose to suffer a back and chest pain for most of Saturday because she didn't want to be a nuisance. So at 7.00pm, just before we were about to serve the langoustine and chicken paella, we got the call. thewife headed straight round, leaving me to blow out the candles, switch the oven off etc, and she phoned when she got there - its only a couple of streets away. She had phoned the doctor who decided to dispatch an ambulance and get her into hospital. Mumsy is looking a bit pale and obviously in pain when I arrive, I have to give her the necessary bollocking of course on account of her delay, thewife too, had done so before I arrived, so she was suitably chastised as the ambulance arrived with the same para-medics that had took auntie N to her unscheduled bypass, 2 years previously, whilst on a visit to Mumsy.

Paramedics are cool, they suggest that its probably not a cardiac thing - she has a history - but that they will treat it as such. thewife accompanies Mumsy in the ambulance and I head off to Crosshouse Hospital, where they have a bright new Accident and Emergency Unit. I arrive at 7.30, just before they did. We sit and wait, its not busy but there are about 15 people sitting around, some in wheeled chairs, who have been through the Triage and are awaiting being admitted into the E.R. and others accompanying them. There is quite a strange collection of people around, you can see how easy it must be to concoct episodes of Casualty or E.R. Only its not Holby or Chicago and the waiting room is calm and well modern with laminate floor and nice yellow and green walls that match staff uniforms. The reception staff are in cubicles, separated from the plebs, and there are swipe card entrys, cctv and automatic double entry doors, which some arseholes seem to think is the smoking area, but that is actually outside in the rain. There's an extended family, from hell, mobile phones and Linkin Park hoodies and quite noisy who appear to be accompanying a mouthy young woman who has what looks to my non-medically qualified eye to be a sprained wrist; a young man looks as if he has a severely bloodshot eye; a bloke in one of the wheeled chairs who looks and smells like a rough sleeper under the influence of something - his shoe is off and his foot looks like its been marinating in an inky brie solution and his face shows very clear signs of pain and discomfort; a young woman who looks as though something may be wrong with arm as she has difficulty removing her jacket; a woman who has done some damage to her foot; everyone else seems to be waiting for people already being treated.

When you are sort of forced to sit around in a place for some time you begin to notice things like despite the newness and modern-ness of the building, it doesn't actually work. The automatic external double door doesn't open and close properly. During the course of our visit someone armed with a set of allan keys comes to repair it. He waits at reception, speaks to someone and then "tailgates" it through the back. Meanwhile receptionist comes out with one of those "elephant's foot" step things, looking for repairman. She goes back into her cubicle, taking the step with her and repairman emerges from behind the scenes with a chair. He uses this to stand on to fix the door and I just burst out laughing, thinking of Health and Safety and just how hilarious it would be if he fell off the bloody thing in A and E. Anyway I also notice that the internal pair of doors are sensor operated. The amazing fuckwit of an overpaid architect designed the place so that every time someone goes for a piss or a drink of water, the doors open. This wouldn't be so bad if the external door worked, but there's a man on a chair fixing that and finally the porter goes out and tells all the smokers to fuck off outside.

The swipe entry cards carried by the staff are really cool, I notice that the NHS are a tad more advanced than my employers, the swipe cards double as I.D. Badges. Only the swipe cards don't seem to work for most of the time and staff end up having to knock on doors to get through them.

thewife tells me that on the way here in the ambulance she was chatting to the para-medics about the place and seems they were consulted on the layout of the building and all of them had made the suggestion that the Coronary Care Unit should be attached to the place, rather than up a floor as people could be taken right there from the ambulance, but somehow this couldn't be done. Perhaps because some prat of a hospital administrator had decided that a stunning frontage that didn't work would make more sense.

We had been sitting around for an hour and a half, the only sign that something was happening behind the scenes was the emergence of a mud-covered man in shorts and socks, whom it transpires had been part of a collapsed scrum, there were others, however thewife appeared strangely uninterested, serves them right for playing a pish game I tell her. She tells me that she is not feeling to grand - she's diabetic, had just taken her medication before this erupted and hadn't eaten anything. I headed off to the the main hospital block, where I knew there was a canteen and vending machines, of course its getting on 9.30 and it's closed, so I head back and the wife speaks to reception and gets some tea and biscuits later. At about this point a frightened young lad rushes in and tells the receptionist that his friend is having a seizure, staff go out and admit him via the ambulance entry. A few minutes later a nurse advises they gathered throng that the waiting time will be increased by an hour and a half from now. This proves too much for the family from hell who depart on mass, probably in search of a conforming bandage. Young man with eye decides that he too can wait. What part of emergency don't these people get???

Its getting on and I too am feeling bloody hungry its after eleven and I haven't had anything to eat for about 9 hours, and I remember the look of the paella and I shelled those bloody langoustines myself.

At 11.30 they take us through to where mumsy is, they are going to admit her, which we knew anyway, but were awaiting a bed which was going to take about ten minutes or so. Mumsy was looking brighter, not so pale, and she was joking and in good form. After about 20 minutes she told us to go as thewife would be soon collapsing of a hypo if she didn't have food. So we did, got home just after midnight and had micro-waved paella, which was still bloody good. Washed down with some South African fizzy on special at Tesco.

posted by timesnewroman at 1:37 PM  

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