Does the NHS Still Exist?

You know, The Not Helpful Service. Yes, that one!

Okay, so here I am on the merry-go-round of the Not Helpful Service, as I believe it's now known.

Up until about three weeks ago, my local surgery provided a pretty incredible service, given all the cuts and other issues it faces in these super-efficient, modern times where, as you know, our health service is in the best overall condition it's been in for years, with an abundance of well-paid health professionals available almost twenty-fours a day to provide for us.

You know, when you could phone your GP at 3 am, wake them from their slumber, and they'd be more than happy to spend twenty minutes with you discussing the best way to remedy your terminal haemorrhoid pain, and, if they weren't doing anything else of importance, make themselves unavailable to other patients requiring their service to pop in and apply a fine Brazillian coffee enema and morphine combination that would enable you to enjoy the rest of your night happily spent on the toilet, metaphorically not otherwise giving a shit.

You remember those days, don't you? NO? Wow, then I must have been dreaming! Perhaps, even the opposite. Some sort of lack of sleep delirium, no doubt. Well, I do remember the days when I could get health services sorted in less than a day by simply ridiculing the shit that was being slung at us by the Whitehall minions, while in my role as Chair of the arms-length Healthwatch organisation, that was both local and national.

Trust me, it's far easier to access the ear of a government Minister when you publicly embarrass the department he, or she is in charge of. By now it's probably something of a standard joke, but twenty-something years ago when I first challenged the appalling way in which mental health services weren't being accessed outside of nine to five by those who really needed it, and came up with the following solution for the out-of-hours access voicemail service as a consideration, suddenly Heaven and earth were moved to find ways of improvement and it went like this -

“Hello and welcome to the mental health hotline.

• If you are Obsessive Compulsive, press 1 repeatedly.

• If you are Co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.

• If you have Multiple Personalities, press 3, 4, 5 & 6.

• If you are Paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call.

• If you are Delusional, press 7, and your call will be transferred to the Mother Ship.

• If you are Schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press.

• If you are Dyslexic, press 96969696969696.

• If you have a Nervous Disorder, please fidget with the hash key until a representative comes on the line.

• If you have Amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, NHS number and your mother's and grandmother's maiden names.

• If you have Post-traumatic Stress Disorder, slowly and carefully press 000.

• If you have Bipolar Disorder, please leave a message after the beep. Or before the beep. Or after the beep. Please wait for the beep.

• If you have short-term memory loss, please try your call again later.

• If you have low self-esteem, please hang up. All our operators are far too busy to talk to you.”

Again, when the reason given for a lack of funding in Mid-Devon was based on the mortality rate for mental health services not being high enough, I invested an entire morning devising an advertising campaign promoting the various ways people could kill themselves, and, even if I do say so myself, to this very day I stand by the fact that had it have been published the mortality rate would have exploded, and, our funding would have arrived by way of a blank cheque. Unfortunately, it was to be that those higher up within the local health authority funding department didn't quite totally share what was referred to back then as my 'blue sky thinking', and due to annual leave time, sick days, sudden family bereavements, and endless back-to-back meetings, I can fully understand how hectic working schedules made it more difficult to return my emails and calls.

It did, however, become quite clear by the end of the same day that despite my efforts to further boost their brilliant idea in terms of mortality rates by rising to their challenge, I received a somewhat disappointing email informing me that the mortality rate funding plan they had devised would now be scrapped. So, much to my regret, the area of Mid-Devon lost out on a potentially valuable source of income.

So, here we are. Probably a decade and a bit forward, or thereabouts, and it feels like I haven't advanced from where I was back then. Either nothing has changed, or, things have got worse. To me, at least, it feels more like the former than the latter. No matter how many moves are made we seem to arrive back at 'Go' - like we are all simply pieces on the board game of life. Of which, my otherwise wholly reliable GP health centre has fallen seriously short on delivery, of late.

I have an ongoing pancreas problem, that, for the sake of this blog post requires a modicum of further explanation. Basically, this vital organ of my body has opted for early retirement, and despite being on medication that basically does the job my old pancreas used to do, I am experiencing an exponential rise in pain I didn't have before, and shouldn't have now.

So, I contacted my surgery on a Friday which, in its infinite wisdom felt that referring me to a Boots pharmacist would be the best way forward. Needless to say, the pharmacist I spoke with the following day (Saturday) was somewhat baffled as to why I'd been referred in the first place and emailed the surgery for me to be contacted on the Monday. Well, Monday came and went, as did Tuesday, and the realisation that between winning the Euromillions lottery draw that same evening and receiving a call from a GP I would probably win the lottery first, I placed an appointment request online and waited to hear back.

Sadly, I didn't win the lottery, but I did receive a message from the surgery providing me with an appointment for............., take a breath and wait for it................MID JULY! How lucky was I? A whole month away! I suppose in the grand scheme of things the pancreas isn't in the top ten of things you will die from fairly rapidly when a sudden shutdown takes place, and this, I should be grateful for at least.

Meanwhile, my life and whatever deems normality to me continues to be upside down in every respect. I'm sleeping when I should be awake, and awake when under subnormal circumstances (such is my life) I should be asleep. Not that I've probably ever been normal anyway. However, everything I'm experiencing is far from whatever constitutes normal for me, and the jury's getting long in the tooth remaining still out on.