They say that Dylan Thomas wrote his poems as a way of expressing his feelings about his own childhood in the rural Welsh countryside.
“Yesterday” apparently was written by Paul McCartney after it came to him in a dream.
Van Gogh painted landscapes and still life's, simply because he loved and was inspired by nature.
I’m afraid I write rubbish blogs that no one reads simply as a way of expressing something that means a lot to me as no one will ,( nor should they) listen to me if I try to verbally get my feelings across. Writing them down seems appropriate and works for me although on this occasion I suspect any sense of release will be somewhat tainted by an uncertain future.
I do however usually try to employ an element, of what might be in some quarters described as humour, in my ramblings. No one wants to read them as they are, but I can only imagine how off putting a series of nothing but moaning and complaining might look like.
Well, I could only imagine it until I stumbled across GB News. Now I know
But this post is no place for such pleasantries as the subject matter is simply too important.
Two days ago, while on a Council fact finding trip, I received the message that no husband will ever want to get. My wife Lisa had been taken ill at work.
This was at 930 am and that is important later.
She had, what we now refer to as an “episode” that meant she totally and unexpectedly lost her eyesight for a few seconds and was extremely shaky. Work colleagues thankfully had called the 111-help number and after being called back by a “clinician “ an hour or so later had been given the advice to get her to our local doctor’s surgery.
Following a wait of another hour and a bit at the Doctors , which Lisa later told me was full of parent s with young children with coughs and colds , clearly petrified by fears of Strep infection, she was seen by the doctor a little after 1.00pm. He then tried for some time to get through to the hospital by phone, but was unsuccessful
I arrived at the surgery at about 2.15pm and was told to take her along with a letter from the Doctor to Cheltenham Accident and Emergency Department as it was Cheltenham that now deals with stroke victims and the Doctor believed Lisa had suffered a mini stroke.
Now the outcome and ongoing issues surrounding Lisa’s health should, I hope you agree, remain a private matter. Suffice to say , she has always been to me a lady of enormous strength and courage. I have seen her overcome issues and battles with fortitude and drive, and I have faith that this will be no different.
What I do want to get across however is how the rest of the day and the night played out.
With a stop for fuel at Elton Corner and the usual battle through school and business traffic in mid to late afternoon by the time we got to the A and E department it was a few minutes before 4.00 pm. I wont even begin to talk about having to prepay to park when you have simply no idea how long you will be .
Following the usual check in procedure with the very pleasant receptionist we took our seats in what was a busy but waiting area. At about 4.30 we were called through to the Nurse who took the Doctors letter and spoke to Lisa about what happened .
We were then asked to return to the waiting area where at about 4.45pm we were called through by another nurse who took several tests, bloods , ecg etc.
We were told by this Nurse that a doctor would look at the results and decide what needed to be done .
All good, splendidly looked after by very nice people, very professionally and in their usual comforting manner that is so synonymous with the NHS.
So, at about five minutes past five we settled down to wait for results and the doctors consultation, We were joined by our eldest son about ten minutes later and this certainly lifted Lisa’s spirits.
At about 530 we felt a cup of coffee was in order but unfortunately the coffee machine was out of order and the café was closed at 230pm. The waiting room was very busy with every seat taken and it was every demographic. There were elderly folk with obviously concerned family members, a steady stream of parents with young children mirroring what was going on earlier in the doctor’s surgery. There were even the injured young rugby and football players , brought in by the PE teacher no doubt. Nurses and the receptionists were kind enough to give the elderly a warm drink that they made themselves.
Ill cut to the chase now and tell you that Lisa got to speak to and was examined by the very excellent Doctor at about midnight. The receptionist told us before she was leaving at 11pm that the medics on the wards would come down when they could and get through the dozen or so patients left that needed their specialities and that could not be treated by the triage nurses.
The reception closed at 11pm.
This came as surprise to the couple who had been send there by Gloucester Royal to deal with a fractured wrist at 11.30pm, although a nurse did come out and take her details.
So, Lisa had a suspected stroke at 930 in the morning and was seen by a doctor in the hospital over fourteen hours later. This included a wait of seven hours, sat on a waiting room chair, worrying ,stressing , in shock and not knowing what was to come. No one could offer any information or advice. We couldn’t go anywhere; we couldn’t even get her a cup of tea.
And it wasn’t just us by any means, so many people going through so many issues, and the staff working so hard , going from one crisis to the next with a smile and with such humanity , its frankly awe inspiring that there are so many people with these virtues. It warms the heart, when you see a nurse, clearly tired and clearly overwhelmed take the time to play a 30 second game of peekaboo with a little girl , red faced from crying with her illness but briefly smiling at this lady.
But we are all human , and when your worried , when you’re on the edge, when you’ve been waiting with now word it becomes trying. You get a little bit more edgy , the little walks up the corridor to see who is about become more regular and when is been four hours ,then five and then six and more, even the best of us find it difficult.
People went home, after waiting some hours and being unwilling to wait any longer.
But this is what its all been reduced to.
There’s an unwritten unspoken agreement almost .
Its between these wonderful Hospital and care workers and the throng of patients.
It’s an agreement that they tell you with their eyes that they know the service they are being forced to give the patients isn’t what it should be and in return most reasonable people don’t have a go , they don’t moan at these frontline staff who can do no more.
They sit and they wait and if they are like me they chunter under their breath.
Silently the two groups , staff, and patients, agree that the NHS has been destroyed.
The GP doesn’t want to have to have a possible stroke victim wait over an hour in his surgery before she is seen.
The hospital staff want to be able to answer a phone call from a GP about a possible stroke victim.
All Hospitals want to be able to deal with all health types issues, so patients don’t all have to attend one in particular if its miles away.
Hospitals don’t want to charge patients large amount of money to park just to raise some funds.
Hospitals want to provide facilities so when people are waiting, they are comfortable.
Doctors don’t want patients waiting for hours on end before being seen.
They want to see them, assess them and treat them.
Hospitals don’t want to be closing a and e departments.
Nurses and receptionists , cleaners, office workers, porters care about the rest of us, they don’t want to make your experience even worse, and they work bloody hard to make sure they do all they can.
But sometimes its beyond even them.
Ambulance drivers don’t want to take hours to get to you,
They don’t want to be parked outside a hospital for hours because they can’t drop you off as there’s no room.
Hospital staff don’t want A and E blocked up by patients, who can’t get a hospital bed because they are blocked by people who could go home but can’t because the social care they need isn’t in place or isn’t funded. The patients don’t want that either.
Nye Bevan once said “It [the NHS] will last as long as there are folk left with the faith to fight for it”
At the risk of being accused of sensationalism I believe the NHS as we knew it is beyond repair. I think too many have lost faith.
We have all these issues and many more, I was told the other day of a family trying to get their daughter a dental appointment being given a date in three months.
People are performing self-dentistry for the love of God !
This is supposedly a modern bright country
Successive governments, successive policies and successive decades have left what was once the jewel in the UK crown a shambling ship almost to the point of being wrecked but stoically kept afloat by the endeavours and sheer bloody graft of those who sail in her.
It still benefits from the hope of the majority being that the minority who make the decisions about it , think it as important as they do.
They don’t.
I don’t want to see that advert where the Government tell you about acting fast if someone may have a stroke.
Speed is of the essence they say !
Save the money and put it into the NHS so that people like my wife can see the Doctor quickly. Ill be happier , the patient will be happier and so will the Doctors and Nurses.
For me this NHS is no longer functioning.
It needs a reset, a completely new approach .
My son is convinced that the powers that be want to make the NHS so bad, even worse than it is now, make it so useless to those that need it, that his generation, those below 30, automatically take out private health insurance to provide for their health care.
Privatisation by stealth .
He is a bright boy my eldest.
I still believe in the concept, the idea and the community value of the NHS.
I want to see a political party, a movement that says , we need to fund this properly. We need to pay our doctors and our nurses, our porters, our ambulance crews and others like dentists etc the right salary so they don’t have to use foodbanks. We must ensure that there’s enough of these wonderful professionals so that they are not overworked to the point of exhaustion.
We need to stop closing beds and wards. We need to make sure each hospital is equipped to provide standard care for the community it serves and yes, I include my own district within that.
We need to stop Councils like Gloucestershire County Council closing perfectly good or improvable care homes and facilities to save money and instead use them as a new branch of the NHS care package tree.
Refurbish, reutilise and staff these places and use them to move in ans support those patients I referred to earlier. The ones awaiting a social care package to enable them to go home, the ones that are “bed blocking “ the wards , that are in turn stopping the people in A and E moving onto a ward, that are stopping the ambulances from dropping their patients off in A and E.
And use the older and not fit for purpose hospitals for such purposes.
In the Forest , how many beds and rooms for people waiting social care packages could be put in place at Westbury Court, in Lydney and the Dilke Hospitals thus clearing beds at Gloucester Royal ?
Instead, these places are closed with the idea that our NHS in Gloucestershire needs to raise as much funding as possible to fund the other stuff that isn’t working.
This isn’t the NHS leader’s fault.
It needs a complete rethink.
Raise the profile and yes, the funding for social care.
Stop doing social care and support on the cheap .
Allow social care companies the flexibility to make working in this sector a career in the same way as a job in the NHS should. Pay people properly, make it something people get rewarded for being involved in. Raise its value, because social care is invaluable to those that receive it and if they don’t. many of them will end up in hospitals and the failing cycle begins again.
And to fund it ? I want to see a party or a public drive that accepts these things must be paid for but that if the nation doesn’t have its health, it has nothing.
Raise income tax by a penny would raise about £5bn and make sure it goes directly to the NHS. Be brave, a 2p income tax rise might raise perhaps £11billion a year according to my internet enquiry.
Yes, it’ll mean a few quid less in our pay-packets but how much will private health treatment cost. I’ll bet if everyone were convinced as they once were that the NHS would treat them quickly and appropriately and that it would be comfortable and professional, they would choose that route.
Be transparent as to what you will spend it on, tax the companies making millions of pounds in profits from supplying the NHS appropriately.
Yes, they need to make a profit but at what cost ?
Brighter people than me can do the sums much more accurately but the point is that until we have a serious conversation about where our NHS has been left to wither , it will only get worse.
I want to see a political movement committed to make it better, more efficient and give these professionals within it a quality of life they deserve.
That efficiency doesn’t mean cuts, but it might mean new ideas , new ways of doing things.
That would be a party I would trust to run the rest of the country.
Without health , we have nothing.
Many may think I’m wrong about this, many will think that trying to tax people more in the current climate is typical socialist nonsense,
But what cost if we don’t ?
How much will private treatment or health insurance cost the lowest paid, how long is it ok to wait for an appointment to see a specialist, or a doctor ?
How long is it ok to be sat in a waiting room? How much self-dentistry is it ok ? Do we then start to think its ok for people to do self-health treatment as well ? How many Doctors and Nurses do we want to leave the NHS till our current funding adds up ? How many of them do we want using foodbanks or charity shops or being exhausted so they need to go sick ? How much do we want private health care companies to take in profit?
The people who work in the NHS perform miracles every day and we should thank them and yes applaud them.
The people that fund it , the ones who decide the strategies need to either change or step aside for leadership that can make the change required.
Without its health , the country has nothing.
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