Inspiration!

There seems to be a thing on Social Media that has a kind of Lazarus effect, Somebody goes in to hospital and posts selfies of themselves looking at death's door with the canula in their arm, drips everywhere,  and lots of words like ‘here I am having potentially life saving surgery after my potentially life saving treatment was delayed by the actual global pandemic and it's 5 minutes before I go under the knife  for my potentially life saving procedure so please read this post and put a lot of likes on it’.

This generally supersedes all medical interventions known to man as the next day there will be a photograph of the potentially life threatened aforesaid patient  out jogging and looking as healthy as a yoghurt advert.

                                                    

I had a little sojourn into our wonderful national health service last week. In Victorian speak, I have been swooning but not alas at the feet of extraordinarily handsome young men, or even moderately handsome rich men. Rather I was fainting, once on top of a patient, and once on the toilet floor at work.

All the way along my GP has been great but she was concerned I had atrial fibrillation which we both agree I was far too young for, but still ….. So I phoned her after the second incident, she asked for my permission to call the hospital and see if they would accept me as they are still under some COVID precautions. 

She called me back within 5 minutes and said I was to go up to A&E (the emergency room) as that was the only way to gain entry into the hospital. After filling in a few forms I was left on a trolley for 8 hours with my anorak round my feet as it was cold in a cubicle separated by paper walls where you could hear everything.

                                 

I was to be admitted to the medical assessment unit but it was full so they were waiting to transfer patients down to the appropriate wards. 

I heard the police arguing with a drunken person that must have been handcuffed to one of the officers. 

I heard the police trying to extract information from an old man with Alzheimer’s who had been found wandering around. 

                                   

There were fractures, lung infections and someone with a chopped off finger who was very apologetic for bleeding all over the floor. Nurses kept opening my curtains and saying,  ‘oh not you then’ and closing them rapidly. Once I was nearly stretchered off for a scan that I didn’t need, eventually at 9 o’clock at night I was trolleyed up to the ward and given a bed. I was wired up to all kinds of machines with a drip in my arm and given a cup of tea and a cheese sandwich.

I think if I had taken a selfie of me at that point I would be remarkably better by now but alas I didn’t so I’m not. 

I was kept in for 2 and a half days, all tests negative, so I’ve a few more to get but really they’re just excluding anything more serious than vasovagal syncope.

                                      

I spent most of those days pretending I was listening to my phone when in fact I was listening to the melodrama of the ward which would have suited the script of Dynasty if Dynasty had been set in a town outside Glasgow where the term 'bear' is used to describe the populace and the word  'feral' often applied to children and 'sobriety' is a state rarely visited. 

Let's just say the material for the next few books was lying there in front of me. The image of Miss Glittery walking around the ward wearing her sequined frock and black stilettos not realizing she was supposed to take the drip stand with her as she toddled around, thus leaving a wake of some very expensive drug that was supposed to protect her liver from her over indulgence in alcohol, was both funny and tragic. You can expect to meet her in a book soon.

                                     

So apart from that I’ve just had my second COVID vaccine, so any minute now I expect to be nanobotted into Bill Gates plan for World Domination. But on reflection I think Nicola (Wee Nippy) Sturgeon might get there first.

Caro Ramsay