I had an interesting day yesterday. I was due to have an online consultation with a nurse from the Colorectal Unit at University Hospital, Lewisham, today at 1.30pm, but had a missed phone call on my mobile phone from them early yesterday morning. (For some reason they seem to think that I don't go anywhere without it. This may be true for some people, but I tend to leave mine on the hall table when I am at home and don't carry it around with me unless I am going out ... hence the fact that I didn't hear it ringing.)
I tried to return their call but after a long wait in a queue ('Your call is important to us; please hold ' ... whilst we play you appalling music) my call was put through to the Oncology Department at the wrong hospital (the Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Woolwich). I got cut off when they tried to divert my call to the right department and I had to rejoin the queue … and when I did finally get through to the right department in the right hospital (University Hospital, Lewisham), it turned out that they wanted to move my appointment from today to yesterday because the nurse who had been overseeing my progress since the removal of part of my colon and the resultant colostomy had moved to a new job. I agreed and sent a somewhat nebulous time for the new appointment from the previous 11.30am to 'sometime this afternoon'.
I’d just put the phone down when I got another call from the Queen Elizabeth Hospital … but this time it was from the Sleep Unit. Apparently, my C-PAP machine isn’t feeding data back to them via 4G and I was asked if I could take it in today at 10.00am for them to check what’s wrong. No sooner had they hung up, but they called me back. They’d made a mistake, and could I bring it in at 1.30pm today … the time when I should have been having my online consultation with the colorectal nurse!
I did manage to speak to the colorectal nurse at 2.00pm, who was very happy with my progress … and it appears that she is arranging for me to have yet another blood test and CT scan next month or possibly the month afterwards. Bearing in mind that I had a blood test last week and have another due next week, my already bruised arm will soon look like that of a fulltime 'recreational' drug abuser!
In the midst of all of the above, I had to take Sue to the dentist to have a new cap put on a tooth at 1.30pm! Whoever said that when I retired, I'd be able to sit down and put my feet up all day was mightily wrong!
The one positive thing that did happen yesterday and that was not health-related was that Gary Sheffield and I managed to fight the final battle of the Franco-Prussian War of 1810, and I shall be writing a battle report about what happened at some point over the next few days.
Crikey, you've been given the runaround.
ReplyDeleteNundanket,
DeleteSometimes I think back to what it was like to be at work, and realise that I don't know how I would have coped with my current medical problems back then.
All the best,
Bob
Archduke Piccolo (Ion),
ReplyDeleteAt least it stops me from becoming an all-day, TV-watching, couch potato!
All the best,
Bob
Nah. At least you'd be THINKING war gaming, Bob.
ReplyDeleteArchduke Piccolo (Ion),
ReplyDeleteVery, very true!
All the best,
Bob
You'd think it would be easy, in this day and age, to share everyone's calendars and set up appointments. Funny that fighting a battle seems easier sometimes.
ReplyDeleteMr. Pavone,
DeleteThe government spent millions (if not billions) of pounds on an NHS computer system that was supposed to avoid this happening … but far too many units have legacy systems that need updating or that are incompatible with the new system.
All the best,
Bob