Hospital musings

Thursday 29 January I walked the 100 yards down the road for the bus to visit the doctor and found I was breathless. The Quack sent me to Ealing Hospital for an EEG. The technician was a Philippino convert from Catholicism. I read her report to the doctor on my way to take the message back to him. I was so breathless i came straight home by bus and was not fit for planned study in the afternoon. The Quack ran in the evening to say he would discus my case with Ealing cardiology. I rang my fellow church member, Dr L who is a top consultant cardiologist at the Hammersmith. He said I should prepare to come to his accident and emergency the next day, earlier if my situation worsened. He said I had congestive heart failure due to atrial fibrillation. I had read my ECG results to him. I phoned and found my first choice locum was available to cover the pharmacy. Dr L stopped two of my three blood pressure medicines and increased the diuretic, something one was not exactly keen on late at night but at least it prevented any worsening of my breathlessness.

Friday 30 January, 11 a.m. arrived at Hammersmith Hospital and within five minutes through triage and in to A and E. Dr L came from cardiology with a houseman and said he would do tests and perhaps send me home for a week of rest to see if the amiodarone, digoxin and warfarin would stop my cardiac arhythmias and congestive heart failure with rapid pulse. However after an ECHO which lasted 45 minutes to see the heart, an X ray and Burinex A diuretic, I was admitted to ward B2 at 5 pm. Our pastor, Paul Levy was my first visitor and as ever an encourager. At 9 pm after a pleasant curry dinner, I was moved to A7. I reckon two Burinex A sent me to the loo at least 12 times before sleep at 11pm. i am now also on aspirin, omeprazole, simvastatin and clexane. Today i have been treated by English, Irish, Australian and Philippino, One woman was a convert to Islam as I guessed when she had a hijab and the name Maria. Ealing Hospital is South Asia, patients and staff. Hammersmith is the world. Today I read Kefa Sempange's amazing account of miracles in Uganda amidst Amin's brutality.

Saturday I added Ghananian, Zimbabwean, Somalian, Ugandan, Indian, British and Ethiopian to the staff caring for me. If you ask what do I mean by British as well as English it is this. I am English but the Indian looking doctor who was born in London, is in my book British. He is not Indian by nationality not English by race. If Ealing Hospital is South Asia both for staff and patients, The Hammersmith is the world in minature. If any groupis the largest it is staff from Philippines. I was up 2.30 to 5.30 as I had nasal congestion so could not use my sleep apnoea machine. I did manage one more hour of sleep. breakfast was generoud ceral and poor toast. The coffee is such that I shall have their decent tea. At 9 am I was moved to ward A6a where there is a self service drinks trolley. . with orange juice. I am tidying up my Mac-book and entering addresses from Christmas Lunch was a tasty Caribbean goat curry. Katy and Rachel were welcome visitors. The morning burinex and amiodarone produced its effect seven times in four and a half hours, the next dose, the same. One is peed off with peeing. I am told by Dr Bellamy, the consultant cardiologist, I have to fast Monday morning for some probe to look in the heart to check if it is OK to be shocked back to normal rhythm. Cardioversion it is called. Lamb Masala was a good dinner though ate. Soup though is bland. Dr L called to see how I was doing. He was just back from seeing Arsenal draw at The Emirates. This is a mixed ward. I was able to tell a lady opposite that her stroke and heart problems were not a punishment form God but could be a test from Him. Patients are here from outside London as it is a renowned cardiology department, the choice even of one Mr Blair, late of Downing Street. Mr Brown has not been here but we do not know if he has a heart. At 9.15 p.m. a manager came round saying they had too many heart attacks at the moment and he would like my bed. Would I move to the Sainsbury Wing? Being a compliant sort of chap I said yes. At 10.30 p.m. I was in my fourth bed in two days and was I glad I agreed. This is upgrade from economy to first class. This is where the likes of Blair are treated privately. Big room on my own. Private bathroom. Had a wallow in the big bath. 14 channels on the TV including Sky Sports 1,, and four I will not be watching as three appear to be Arabic and one Greek. So I only have 10 channels comprehensible. Sandwiches when I felt peckish. All that is missing is the wifi. This is great. If they ask me if i am willing to move again I shall of course agree, providing I am kept in this standard of care. No downgrades for me! Can I get a cooked breakfast tomorrow? Judging by the glass of water I have, not a plastic cup, I think I might get it. Oh. I have a fridge too, but it is sadly empty. Full of no beer :-( I have read a book a day so far. The TV may distract me. My fellow transferee to this luxury is an undertaker, retired. He disposed of Freddie Mercury, Billy Fury, Harry H Corbett and Fred Emery My nurse here is a lovely Indian Christian who said I was her first patient in four years to bring in their own Bible. I retired to bed at midnight having read Melvyn Bragg, The Adventure of English and a short thesis on Federal Vision.

Sunday 1st February

Woke up 1.15 a.m. and enjoy devotions from Ps119, Proverbs 24 and I. Tim 6 plus Calvin's Institutes on the Second Commandment. I am now reading William Grimshaw of Howarth by Faith Cook. I slept 2.30 to 6.15 am and woke to a freezing morning outside. At 6.30 a.m. coming to take my blood pressure etc., my sweet Indian nurse tells me my night was monitored on CCTV. This is the Big Brother private ward. I think Nanny State should have told me earlier that I was on camera. 7.15 and my breakfast request is noted. I think it was pineapple juice, grapefruit, corn-flakes, Danish pastry and coffee. No full English :-( . I am NOT complaining, merely observing. The menu is different for the rich here. Yesterday as a pleb it was a generous bowl of cereal , cold sliced bread toast and coffee of such quality as to turn my subsequent choice to tea. The catering lady here is better dressed and of a higher standard too. As I await my grub, dawn is breaking fine and cold. I think my view is of the adjacent Queen Charlotte's Maternity Hospital. This time yesterday, two wards ago, the view was over to Wembley and the stadium arch. I see it is 72 F in here and I am cool next to the big window so I am waiting to see if turning up the room thermostat warms me. I do not need to wait. I have switched on a fan heater. 8 a.m. Anna from Zimbabwe takes blood and breakfast arrives 8.15 the orderly changing my breakfast tray has a big surprise. She is Aminatu Issa, Muslim,mother from Ghana, father Hausa Nigerian so I speak to her in her father's language if not her mother tongue. She speaks six languages. I had less than 12 years speaking Hausa in Nigeria yet I can still churn it out with enough fluency to be complimented .
Aminatu is my first Nigerian and now 12th nationality. Greek TV had had an Orthodox service for at least the last hour. Very musical liturgy and perhaps our church could get us nice golden robes too. Or perhaps I could go orthodox as i have the beard for it. I note the choir is all male. My ability to read the subtitle Greek script tells me this is Saint Naos Cathedral, Athens. 8. 30 and my orders for lunch and dinner have been taken by an ethnic minority person, local English. She explains the clock tower outside is not the maternity hospital but the official front of this one. My view is explained as from White City in the east, the new shopping centre, to Shepherds Bush, Q.P.R ground and Acton in the west. I can see the A40 going into London and the Central Line too. 9 a.m. Kate the nurse is Polish, 13th nationality. I am told my pulse has slowed so the digoxin is working. It is the oldest specific in the formulary being derived from digitalis, foxglove, an English 18th century discovery. The Greek service looks like it might be the funeral of a or bishop. There is a lot of shouting it seems from the congregation and many clergy. It does have an ornate beauty to eye and ear. 9.15 my choice of paper is delivered. I hope I will not be charged for my Sunday Times. I forgot to ask Seven different medicines to swallow, one injection, two different drugs later in the day. As I often say, the pharmacists' motto is, ' 'It is better to give than receive' ...especially suppositories'. My Polish nurse Kate is about to marry a well to do polish builder. She says my vodka has to wait until the wedding in July. I tell her my two Polish jokes. Amante my Philippino cleaner tells me he is an electroplating engineer who has worked in China and Singapore. Here he needs a local certification to work with micro-conductors. In England for the sake of his wife and children who preceded him here, he confesses to feeling humiliated in having to wield a mop. 10. 30 a.m. I have explored this floor. From the end window you can see the Post Office Tower. There are 13 private rooms, but no number 13. Half are occupied. I am told they will fill up tomorrow. Perhaps they will want to move me. Near me is the undertaker Alan from Northolt, feeling unwell since Thursday. He had a triple bypass done here. We agreed we have come up in the world.. I am asked if I would like tea or coffee. A tray arrives with biscuits too and horror of horrors, Kate says I am to go back to A6A. It was good while it lasted. I told her I want my posh lunch sent down and I am coming back to watch the football. My bed with the rich is no more :-( But Alan the undertaker has not been told to move. Nor has an Indian insurance broker i have just chatted to. A Sikh form Buckinghamshire, he too was upgraded yesterday. He has been here three weeks after a heart attack. It is 11.15. The move is awaited as is my diuretic. It was changed yesterday. It has been a pleasant morning without enforced peeing. Thank you inefficient hospital pharmacy. 11.30 and I am asked am I ready to move. I have just met a Portuguese caterer and a cleaner from Uganda who tells me Amin was good for Uganda and only disliked here because he challenged the West. This is as stupid as African support for Mugabe today. 11.45 Kate takes my blood pressure. I tell her she does not love me as she is sending me away.

On a more serious level, this private wing in an NHS hospital does raise concerns with me. When Bevan started the NHS in 1946 he boasted he had stuffed the consultants' mouths with gold. He had bribed them into the NHS. My medic readers will not like this next bit. My contention is, as the books says, 'No man can serve two masters'. But the consultants have done it for over 60 years. They have generous NHS salaries supplemented by income from private patients. It is not in the NHS patients' interests. When my wife was being messed about by one such incompetent orthopaedic surgeon at Central Middlesex, his secretary asked her over the phone if she was a NHS or a private patient. Compliant Katy meekly answered 'NHS'. I would have asked the secretary if she was a private employee or NHS. The point is, if you require a non-emergency procedure you take you place in the NHS queue . It you have the money or insurance you go private, jump the queue and are treated by the same people or at some posh private hospital or it seems in a wing of an NHS one. I am all for posh private hospitals. I am not for NHS consultants moonlighting.

I get the same in the pharmacy. NHS patients are referred private. They come back with a private script, and against the NHS rules, the GP writes an NHS script instead saving the now NHS/private patient money. This is what happens all the time in the real world. The NHS rules allow some mix with private but the reality is a lot more mixing goes on to the disadvantage of me the tax payer. Nearly half my income goes in tax and I am not a happy bunny about it when I have to stand in the NHS queue jumped by private patients. Let's face it. The NHS is a bottomless financial pit. The better it is, the longer it keeps people like me alive, the more it costs. Baroness Warnock and her euthanasia friends would probably want us plebs dead at 60. No pension to pay out. No huge geriatric NHS bill. I think the baroness is considerably older than me so her ilk will I am sure not want an equal opportunities policy of euthanasia for all at 60. But the liberal elite have never really been egalitarian . They only pretend. They are the self-proclaimed intellectual liberal elite who have a (non-divine because they have no God) right to tell us what to do. They do though have a god. Each is a self made person worshipping their creator. Often their ignorant conceit knows no bounds. I say ignorant because a Dawkins-like evangelical atheist cannot comprehend that one can be rational and a person of true Christian faith. I can comprehend their position and show them a measure of respect despite their folly. They cannot respectfully comprehend mine. I am a fundamentalist, creationist, homophobic irrational bigot.

RANT OVER.

12.45 I am back in my old A6A bed. The ward has the new diuretics so, peeing here we come, and no more the private bathroom. I have now met a local born black British man of Antiguan parentage and another English nurse. The new lady opposite me is Polish. The guy in the next bed is of Pakistani origin, a retired civil servant with the former Board of Trade. My special soup, roast pork with cheese and biscuits are no more. I chose salmon with gruyere sauce over chilli con carne or vegetarian curry. I am told it is the same as upstairs. but upstairs is ' Alan Bennett' class in the words of the hilarious Hale and Pace Yorkshire Airlines sketch. The food may be some of the same but it is served in a much better way. Never mind I am filled by another nondescript soup with this time a roll, my salmon, yoghurt and orange juice. Starving I am not. Just missing Newcastle versus Sunderland. 2 p.m. approaches when lights are dimmed and visitors chased away. 2 15 to 2.45 I managed a snooze with the sleep apnoea machine on but something woke me during supposed quiet time. Registrar and house officer I believe. Anyway, the tea trolley was there too, Cuppa and custard creams. Katy and Deb visited . Supper was soup, roll, Arabic chicken with rice and veg. Very tasty and finished off with creme caramel. The lady opposite tells me she was nine when the Russians invaded her native Poland in 1939. Her civil servant father had had some political activity so the family was deported to Siberia and the cold for two years. After Hitler turned on Russia, the Soviets released some Poles. Her father and later husband made it into the British Army. She took until 1947 to get here. She was a year in Afghanistan, four years in Iran and a spell in Lebanon before England. The Gledhills from church visited at evening service time. They left and out pastor Paul, and fellow elder Andrew Rae visited. Cheerful me gave Paul hymn instructions in case of any untoward event tomorrow.
I have not read much Grimshaw today. I had a free Sunday Times as a private patient and have enjoyed it. But it is so secular with anti-Christian whining from Davis Attenborough who says he gets hate mail from creationist Christians. He blames Genesis for our environmental problems. But Genesis encourages stewardship of the creation by man the vicegerent. My question to the evolutionists is why do they bother to conserve species? Is not nature red in tooth and claw? Why protect weak, soon to be extinct species if you believe in evolution?

Around 11 p.m. my kind Ghanian nurse brought tea and toast. As from midnight I am NBT as the sign on my bed says. Nil By Mouth, No food or drink until my procedure tomorrow. What time depends on when theatre and anaesthetists can fit me in. I tried to put on my sleep apnoea mask before 11.30. It was snowing outside. I was hot in bed and someone's device kept making pinging noises so I could not sleep. I read on Grimshaw until nearly midnight when, mask back on, I slept.

Monday February 2nd

Something woke me around 2.30 a.m. Could not get back to sleep for a pinging machine in the next bay so I had my devotional time. This ward has 10 beds, nine occupied. It is mixed sex something I thought was being stopped. I do not mind except when you go to the loo only to find a woman inside on the throne who has forgotten to lock the door. It looks like over an inch of snow outside. This is remarkable as London will have had some snow every month from October. Since I came here i have been doing some work with my Mac-book. I have installed things recovered from an old Mac crash and tried to instal some programs I had on older Macs. However, it seems a lot of stuff is prior to OSX so cannot be used , I have though transferred a lot of photos from as far back as July 93 when I bought my first digital camera.
By 5 .am I was sleepy and went back to bed with the mask but the pinging monitor kept me from sleep and I rose at 6 a.am to be told the snow was two inches deep outside. I am told Nil By Mouth does not exclude my medicines. But I am only allowed a sip of water to get them down and no diuretic as they want a dry operating table.
The nurses say the snow may be six inches and London has ground to a halt. I hope it does not mean my procedure is delayed. I am told it involves sedation to enable a camera to go down the throat to look at the heart. If there are no clots hanging about I get the necessary shock treatment and all being well can go home today. Call me a sceptic but I am very doubtful of getting out of here today. I have a shower to clean up for theatre. For the good news, if I heard my weight correctly, I have lost eight pounds in two days. That is all fluid peed off. By 7 a.m. the nurses are wondering if staff will get in to take over the new shift. I am sleepy and manage an hour with the mask asleep. At 9 a.m. the few staff here have either walked or driven. There is no public transport. Estimates vary but at least four inches. My family tell me schools are shut in Cambridge but Canterbury has got off lightly with much less snowfall. I continue to starve.
Slept 9 to 10, 11. 30 the registrar told me the consultant is not in due to the snow so it unlikely I can be treated today unless another consultant is in and willing. I doubt it and would like to know quickly so i can eat and drink. But his staff are not there it seems to answer the phone. At 12.30 a doctor is sent o get an answer. He says they will do it.
The time scale now gets blurred as my watch was removed. I missed lunch. A consultant anaesthetist came with lots of questions for me. She said I will go out quickly from an injection and in perhaps no more than 20 minutes she will put a tube into my lungs to keep me breathing while the cardiologists put an ultrasound tube down the throat to check there are no clots on the heart. Then the shock and I should come round with no more than a sore throat. That is the theory. She does not know at what time, as they are doing mainly emergencies only due to the snow. But she promised it A.S.A.P..

I think it was perhaps after 3 p.m. when I was walked to theatre and put on the anaesthesia bed. There was IV local anaesthetic then midazolam. I was told to keep my eyes wide open. I might have done so for five seconds. The next I knew I was in recovery with a Christian Tamil nurse from Sri Lanka. I felt like I had had a god sleep. I was told it had all gone fine and the heart was back to normal. No sore throat then but terrible coughing. Back on the ward, in a different bed, I am all hooked up with electrodes, blood pressure cuff, oxygen etc. The last I quickly stopped. The doctors say they need to stabilze my warfarin which hopefully means home on Wednesday. By 6 p.m. I had my first food and drink in 18 hours. Then son in law Adrian brought Katy. I was able to download from cameras they brought and got pictures of the snow at home. I asked for a radio but it is not getting a signal, What does is the sample Googlephone Adrian brought. However it is so fiddly and frustrating I may not do much on the web. It came with no instructions and id very very frustrating. Also frustrating is being given a diuretic when you have had no drink and you have to use a bottle in bed. You have a raging thirst and with so many wires and tubes using a bottle is problematic. Before sleep I complained of pai from the cannula in the back of my right hand. Why I asked was it there and not on the left? It hampered dexterity. The nurse removed it and did not replace the drip. She did leave some of my blood on the floor though.

Tuesday February 3rd.

I am not sleeping. I did go off but soon after midnight I am awake. I am persevering with Googlephone, drinking water and passing the same. The light over the bed is faulty so I do not think I can read my Bible. However, I find I can just. But it is not a good night. I can nether sleep nor stay awake. I was told to drink plenty then not to drink so much. My mouth is soon dry whatever I do. I want these three electrodes off A.S.A.P. then I will be free to move. 7 a.m. I am disconnected from the wires and free to move, especially to the loo.
Breakfast, 8.45, Weetabix with hot milk, toast and tea. ( a.m. had all the medicines including Clexane injection. Now for the pe run, but it may not start for an hour or two. 9.45 registrar round. reduced the diuretic to daily. Confirmed I could be home tomorrow. Staff now include Sierra Leone plus Trinidad and Tobago. 10.15 blood taken by phlebotomist whose family is Jamaican. Around 11 my friends, Paul and liz Meiners came to visit. They had dah difficulty finding me as for some unknown rason, the powers that be did not have the record of where I was. In fact by midday I am back in my former bed on this ward. I was moved last night to a bed with all the monitoring equipment. I had a sleep before lunch arrived late at 1.45. Ackee with saltfish, Marley stew and rice was tasty and fiery enough for perspiration. 2.30 and the doctor gets my warfarin levels from the lab. They are good. I can be discharged. He says I will need egular blood tests. I phone one of the surgeries where I work and they agree to look after me. I phone for Katy to pick me up and await my discharge drugs from the pharmacy. I was home 4.30 p,m,