It’s the exam season so the May 1 Workers Bank Holiday weekend as ever filled with… work. So many papers to mark, moderation to perform and students to chase. Of course with some parallels to  Junior Doctors, teachers ‘only work 5 days a week’. 9 til 4 or in our school 8 til 2:30. Which sort of assumes no preparation, before or after. AS IF. I’m guessing Jeremy Hunt reckons Doctors just wander onto the wards miraculously knowing what to do straight away.
So with that background tension, tricky issues to cope with lower down the school and coursework deadlines imminent it’s all a bit tense. And I’m only part time.
Thursday I tripped whilst picking up mobile. Somehow I twisted neck. One thing led to another pain reaching spinal type levels of old, ‘Neck locked in a sort of holding-a-mobile -type pose…GP arranged a ‘slot’ tried to manipulate neck, sent to Physio, she couldn’t get near.   Sent to A and E..4 hour wait the notice said. I was all set to go home and hope but M was with me. Insisted I stay. The room filled with various sore toes, fingers and even a drunken river swimmer. Accompanying families quadrupled the crowd. But you know what? After about an hour I got triage’ d. Got assessed, got some whacking big dose of diazapam and painkillers zapped in, doctor seen. Plan for follow up. Better have scan and see spinal man. OH NO. But …Home again to blissful unconsciousness under all that med. A 24/7 speedy helpful service. Bet the sore toes took a while but they’d have been seen. 24/7 . I did spy river man discharge himself and shuffle off into the night!
Meanwhile, back to bladder. I have been trying since March to arrange appointment with Dipstick. As ever patient knows nothing, does nothing and therefore is nothing. He even sent a rare email suggesting I organise some medicine with the ‘girls’.  Not sure which girls he meant – bet whoever they are not keen to hear that descriptor.  Needless to say no one has a clue. I have decided to give up asking for an appointment or in fact for anything. It’s too stressful and I am always in the wrong.  I email-replied to explain that. The response was an instruction to his office to ‘sort it out’.  It won’t be, because no one not even the ‘girls’ will have any idea what he wants.  He’s a busy important brilliant surgeon. He just needs a diary a PA and an email software package.  I hear Google is good at prioritising inbox!
Over the summer I enter the world of NHS land in London having fought for so long to get that. So maybe a fresh start and we might get somewhere.  But I’m only a 24/7 patient with absolutely nothing else to do. What do I know? Oh better go, its nearly midnight and students are panic emailing…24/7!