Here we are the 1st day of 2o25.

2024 took my family through hell and back. NHS pushed us to our very limits. But now we are on the other side.

Looking back in as brief a glance as I dare, we had daughter 1 in and out of hospital for the first part of the year.

then my parents making full use of ambulances, hospitals, care homes, palliative care teams and of course their miserable endings which I have written about previously.

The happier blogs were about heading up a talk I titled ‘Urine Luck’, Boxercise classes and mysterious meetings in London hospitals one of which involved wooden ships.

I am, and will always be grateful to the NHS of course not only for my family but for me. It is extraordinary to think that paramedics, A and E and surgery are only a phone call away. For an emergency. Remember my knee? when I impaled it on a tree!

You can sense a but in this appreciation.

End of life care, is shocking. We rely on charities to supply the kind of dignified and respectful care to the dying. It simply does not work because, as a charity they are poorly resourced, hopelessly over subscribed and inevitably tied up with ridiculous bureaucracy. One example: I drove round scanky Milton Keynes stepping over drunken, dead or drugged bodies to get the medication my mum needed. What a shit show. And of course the new government has imposed higher NIC so that will affect costs in…of course you know that…care homes nursing homes and….charities for palliative care.

Then the appalling lack of dignity and care of the frail elderly residents of care homes and patients in hospital. They are denied the dignity of clean pants, pads and continence products to suit individual needs. The letters, the torrent of messages I have fired at the local MPs and ICBs to request an end to the rationing of pads. Not an answer to be had. Yet. watch this space.

Please see the article I contributed to for the *iNewspaper. I will not let this rest. I will get this sorted.

Finally my own care. No appointment with Dipstick. His cancelled appointments cancelled clinics and totally cancel culture just defies all decency. The urology gentamicin protocol team promised to ring every six weeks. To supply further medication needles and syringes. Needless to say they have not.

TheGP has sent some msu samples that’s been better than usual but the delays in results, the nonsensical prescribing of drugs I am allergic to and the hopeless ignorance of any of my medical history defies logic and is potentially dangerous.

The spinal implant has need of a new battery and the leads have migrated. An urgent appointment was made for 24th December evening. But worried i would not get a train home I requested a change. Not speaking to any human another appointment came through, 31st December evening . Nope I wrote in again. Tricky to get home after that. I guess another will arrive sometime.

Asthma injections each month seem to have helped and despite the nervous wait for the supply at home they do eventually arrive. That’s actually amazingly brilliant thank you to NHS and lets face it saves NHS treating me in hospital.

Asthma and knee…that’s been an NHS success for me. KNEE

But the bladder – benign condition. Ignored. No one cares. The impact on women’s lives in so many ways, affecting quality of life, ability to function on a day-to-day basis., the psychological affects of dysfunctional pelvic floor prolapse is another example. One which the University of Birmingham, NIHR study I have been honoured to be part of has been extraordinary. The stories the misogyny of clinicians in 2024 has literally brought tears pouring.

Jaw surgery – still waiting.

Thank you for reading these blogs. My stream of consciousness the downloads. I try to think of the funny side, it doesn’t always work!

Most of all a massive thanks to Jerome without whom I could not get the drugs I need, the tests I desperately need and above all else the humour I just always love and need. How the hell he does it I do not know. But he does. Those of us who know, his patients, are so grateful. please will someone make him in charge of BAUS and get the B in benign sorted.

Don’tforget to raise a toast of Baileys or whisky in a beautiful teacup.

Here we go 2025 I am going to get you….watch out!

*iNewspaper link is here

*NIHR CPOP study is here