Yo!
Ms Raccoon would like apologies for her absence to be noted in the minutes.
I wasn’t in any fit state to deal with the bickering, carping, mud hurling, whinging e-mails, or bad tempered tweeting, from assorted individuals that fills the daily life of a blogger.
So I came up with a very simple solution – turn the comments off, turn Twitter off, shut down the e-mail and retire to bed with nowt to worry about except myself. I seemed to be all out of altruism.
I have not been, as you may have gathered, very well. As befits someone who has, I learned yesterday, now been on the ‘Gold Standard for End of Life Care’ for 19 months…and fully intends, as I told my informant, to stay on it for a damn sight longer…
Mr G was waiting outside the surgery as they opened yesterday to tell them of the sharp decline in my breathing over the week-end, and to say that he could get me to the surgery if they could find a slot for me to see the GP. They couldn’t. The (named GP) was fully booked all week, no spare time at all, at all. Not a ten minute slot in sight.
He phoned the palliative care service to see what they could advise. They would call him back. They did. The GP would be at my bedside at 12pm. Definitely not to take me anywhere. All very nice and convenient for me – but it was the same GP! What kind of lunacy runs a system whereby he doesn’t have ten minutes to spare to see a patient in surgery – but can leave surgery and drive several miles to spend half an hour at the bedside of the same patient? Does anybody know whether there is a different payscale for home visits for patients on the ‘Gold Standard’? I feel churlish complaining since it worked out well for me – but it just seems illogical.
He was charming, and said it was no problem at all, he was glad to see me having not seen me for eight months, and that apparently is unusual for a patient on the ‘Gold Standard’. Apologies for not conforming to the norm and all that…
He hadn’t seen me because I already see a bevy of consultants – why would I go and see him as well? What for? I don’t have anything else wrong with me – or so I thought.
Apparently I do. Over the last six months I have been quietly giving house room to ’emphysema’. I had to look it up too. I do remember someone vaguely mentioning at the hospital that I showed ‘early signs’ – but it was never mentioned again. They had been informing the GP though, as each scan showed it getting worse. Trouble was – I had no reason to visit the GP. The consultants I see are only interested in the lung cancer. The GP hadn’t heard from me. End result it hasn’t been treated for six months.
It has now; I have a fancy new inhaler which feels as though my lungs have been spring cleaned, I can’t believe the difference.
But what kind of lunatic system relies on a patient visiting a GP on the off chance that there might be something else wrong with them that they are unaware of?
No wonder the surgeries are full if everyone who sees a consultant then has to run back to the GP to find out what else is going on and get treated for it.
Has anybody heard of holistic medicine?
Or finding an extra ten minute slot for a patient who can get to the surgery rather than send the same GP on a 12 mile round trip for a house visit?
I might just point out that I have two years worth of scans in a folder beside me, taken in France, that show my lungs as clear as a bell….until a year after I gave up smoking and lost that nice protective layer of tar that used to save them from evil infiltrators. Since when they have been invaded by both cancer and now emphysema.
Let that be a warning to you…..
Madame will now settle down and write the post that she planned for a week ago – and turn comments back on.
- Joe Public
September 20, 2016 at 1:19 pm -
“The GP would be at my bedside at 12pm.
What kind of lunacy runs a system whereby he doesn’t have ten minutes to spare to see a patient in surgery – but can leave surgery and drive several miles to spend half an hour at the bedside of the same patient?”
Easy. Lunch time appointment. After patient visit, skive off home for (whatever), on claimable business mileage.
- The Last Furlong
September 20, 2016 at 1:29 pm -
“until a year after I gave up smoking and lost that nice protective layer of tar that used to save them from evil infiltrators. Since when they have been invaded by both cancer and now emphysema.”
That is not unheard of – more common than you think!
What a bugger.
Glad your inhaler is helping.
- dearieme
September 20, 2016 at 3:01 pm -
My old Ma stopped smoking. Her cough got far worse until a coughing attack -> heart attack -> grave.
My father never did stop his heavy smoking until lots of cancers got him.
Best not to take the foul habit up.
- dearieme
- Roderick
September 20, 2016 at 1:29 pm -
That “nice protective layer of tar” that used to be on your lungs has a lot to answer for. If I recall correctly it paralyses the mechanism that would otherwise be moving any inhaled gunk out of your lungs 24/7.
- Suffolker
September 20, 2016 at 1:30 pm -
I certainly agree with you on “protective tar”. I smoked like the proverbial chimbley until I gave it up many years ago. Until then, I used to get a cold or whatever about every 5 years or so, and never a cough. Since then, I fang on to every cold and other thing that goes around, and now have hayfever to boot.
I’ve always creosoted my garden fences to keep them in order, and a similar treatment seemed to keep coughs and colds at bay. Were it not so darn expensive and pariah-like, I sometimes think I’d take up my trusty briars again.
Glad you’re back in action, so to speak.- dearieme
September 20, 2016 at 3:02 pm -
Pipe smoking is quite different; I do miss it, I admit.
- The Blocked Dwarf
September 20, 2016 at 11:45 pm -
So go back to it? Why would anyone give up something that pleasurable? I have recently started a pipe (by accident, long story involving a strange Walloon, a Dutchman and some Germans…) and I can well see the appeal…took awhile but I think I will keep with it for the foreseeable future. As I smoke and pipe outside I have found the comments of passers-by very interesting. Many are surprised to see anyone smoking a pipe, indeed one small child asked his mommy the other day why ‘that man is breathing smoke’, another asked his mom ‘what is that smell?’ (both mothers gave me looks like I was Jimmy Savile in gold Speedos). But I get a lot of positive comments as well, often wistful ones from former pipe smokers- seems to be quite a lot of them infact. Or “My Ol Da’ , ‘e smoked a pipe, always loved the smell”.
Only comment, besides the pseudo coughing, that irritates me is when locals ask me if I have taken to a pipe to cut down/give up cigarettes. The looks on their faces when i tell them that my 5 or so pipes a day are in addition to the 40-60 cigarettes a day. Hell i take particular pleasure in informing them that I can get so much tobacco into my Oom Paul that it takes over an hour to smoke (and that inhaling all the way).
- Ljh
September 21, 2016 at 2:12 pm -
Anna, welcome back, I hope you have a catalogue of daffodils, to select some glory January to April, after which the fizz popping of spring takes over.
Blocked Dwarf: I would love to invite a pipelover to gently smoulder in my favourite armchair and saturate it in the smoky aromas of the past. I, alas, have never been any good as anything but a passive smoker.
- Ljh
- The Blocked Dwarf
- dearieme
- AndyM
September 20, 2016 at 1:30 pm -
No apologies necessary m’am – glad to hear you have some improvement. Must admit I was a tad concerned for you when the comments were turned off – other than a severe medical issue thought there might be a legal attack or something.
- Wigner’s Friend
September 20, 2016 at 1:35 pm -
Ditto. Thought Tricky Dicky the underbridge lurker might have been giving you some moderation trouble. Glad you’re back and feeling better.
- Dioclese
September 20, 2016 at 2:40 pm -
Tommy Twelvetoes has thankfully buggered off. He’s concentrated on my blog which I guess means I have performed a valuable public service by keeping him away form the rest of you…
Some of the comments he did manage to get past the IP blocker ended up in moderation and I can confirm that Anna’s little visit did little to settle his invective. Some of the things he said about Anna in the full knowledge of her medical condition were nothing short of disgusting. I’ve kept them in case police action becomes necessary. I don’t care what he says about me but some things are just beyond the pale.
Keep fighting Anna. I’ll get that cup of tea out of you yet
- Major Bonkers
September 21, 2016 at 12:44 pm -
I’m still waiting for my (alcoholic) drink… .
- Major Bonkers
- Dioclese
- Wigner’s Friend
- james higham
September 20, 2016 at 1:37 pm -
Sometimes you just have to withdraw and start over. Know the feeling.
- JuliaM
September 20, 2016 at 1:56 pm -
“…and fully intends, as I told my informant, to stay on it for a damn sight longer…”
That’s the spirit!
- Stewart Cowan
September 20, 2016 at 2:36 pm -
I have also experienced the ridiculous and the sublime of the ‘best health service in the world’ (what – better than Burkina Faso’s?). “Lunacy” is the right word to describe how the NHS ‘works’. Why do you think they need so many managers? The left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing and along come a few more hands to complicate matters more and the one sane, competent person in the building eventually sorts it out. In the process – somehow – among the endless form-filling and meetings and diversity training – people do get some medical treatment.
It is a disgrace that they didn’t follow up on the emphysema. It took a certain doctor round here a year to diagnose a friend of mine with Parkinson’s, despite the fact that her hands shook excessively. I don’t know how much more obvious it could have been. He assumed it was her nerves. Still, he only had about 25 years of experience (in endless form-filling and meetings and diversity training).
“Has anybody heard of holistic medicine?”
Aren’t those the halls with poor acoustics where doctors go for seminars to learn of the latest 1980s treatment?
I doubt the NHS would go in for holistic medicine, seeing as their primary raisons d’etre (excuse the absence of accents) have nothing to do with health; monitoring and nagging being more important. Plus, holistic medicine would create a much healthier land and that would result in mass redundancies of doctors. The sale of 4x4s would also collapse.
- Ted Treen
September 20, 2016 at 5:45 pm -
The NHS is, unfortunately, the best example in the world of Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy:-
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy
In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely.
- Ted Treen
- Hadleigh Fan
September 20, 2016 at 3:30 pm -
The business of smoking is a complex one. I speak as a non smoker (I tried it, and didn’t get on with it). A few years before the public smoking ban I got very aware of the horrendous stink one’s clothes acquire when you have been in the company of smokers, and what it does to one’s office, home or car if someone lights up there. My particular annoyance would be sitting in a restaurant where people were smoking at a nearby table, and some woman (it was normally a woman) would hold her lit cigarette at arm’s length in my direction, presumably so the smoke didn’t get in her eyes.
On the other hand, smoking outdoors seems to harm no-one, and if a smoker wishes to do it in their own home or car, that seems to me to be a matter of personal choice. I’m rather dubious of the claims of the dire effects of ‘secondhand smoke’, and frankly, if it has been filtered through someones lungs it’s difficult to see that the residue hurts that much – even in a smoke filled pub, the concentration is so much less than at the soggy end of a ciggy. I suppose there are exceptions to smoking harming no-one – for example, I imagine it isn’t a good idea when you are filling the car with petrol, or handling explosives.
I often wonder what people in the past would make of smoking bans. For example, at an airfield in 1944: “My God! All eight of you are smoking, and that aircraft is carrying 2,000 gallons of petrol and 10 tons of bombs! Stamp them out! Now! Otherwise, most of you can count on being sick 50 years from now …”
- Chemist
September 21, 2016 at 5:29 pm -
Smoking and handling plastic explosive will be fine, you can throw the stuff in a fire and it won’t explode. Special forces have found it especially useful to heat up tins of beans!
- Chemist
- Rossa
September 20, 2016 at 3:53 pm -
My late father had 54 hospital visits in his last 12 months of life. It seemed like each time to see a different consultant for each thing wrong with him. Pancreas, heart and then lungs, not forgetting his back problems after his spinal fusion op. He’d then had a pacemaker fitted and was given 18-24 months to live before stage 4 heart failure would see him off. His file was nearly a foot thick (we could always spot it on the trolley by reception) and at each appointment the consultant had to flick through it to find their section, completely ignoring the rest.
Then they spotted the shadow on one lung on the x-Ray’s taken for his heart problem. Oops, looks like we’ve missed a lung tumour. Queue the repeated visits for radiotherapy, to reduce the tumour by a third. It never spread and he was convinced it was from his early days working in a spray booth using cellulose paint. He was also a heavy smoker but had given up about 10 years before. Finally he ended up in the hospice still being monitored for his ‘cancer’. His wife and all the staff focused on that and completely forgot about his heart problem until I pointed it out about a week before he died. It had been over 2 years since he’d had the pacemaker fitted, so to me it was clear he was in the terminal stage of heart failure.
His death certificate records the cause of death as lung cancer, though the Professor who oversaw the medical side of the hospice care did acknowledge that actually it was heart failure. But then we all die of heart failure, don’t we? It seems from your recent experience Anna that not even a named GP, who is meant to coordinate your gold standard care, can provide a holistic treatment plan. Even with the consultants spotting the early signs of emphysema and letting the GP know, where was the follow up call or letter from your practice asking you to go in to be checked?
No coordination at all. I was told I had breast cancer by my GP when the letter from the hospital actually said I was on a call back (fortunately clear)! And that was after I asked her, during an appointment for an unrelated matter, if they’d had a copy of the letter I had received. She looked up the scanned letter and just read the one sentence that had been entered as a summary and that was incorrect. Fortunately I knew what the letter actually said and asked for my file to be corrected. I even had to remind her that I needed a smear test as they’d forgotten to send me a reminder. Maybe I should go once a year, for an appointment I don’t need, just to find out if I’ve missed out on anything else. It seems you have to manage your own care these days.
- The Last Furlong
September 20, 2016 at 4:01 pm -
Then we could visit the doctor just to say “I’m just coming here to get confirmation on MY diagnosis”! They don’t like that. I know because I’ve done it several times.
- Lisboeta
September 20, 2016 at 4:33 pm -
I’m so glad to see you back! When your last article stayed in place, but with comments turned off, I got quite concerned. (Obviously, I didn’t know the reason until now.) Anyway, I’m happy that you are now breathing better … and just as snarky as ever. Keep fighting! My best wishes to you.
- Chromatistes
September 20, 2016 at 4:36 pm -
Perhaps you could find the time to plant some daffodils. You would not wish for it to be Spring without appropriate blooms.
- Thomas
September 20, 2016 at 5:07 pm -
Great idea to plant some Daffodils, it gives one something to look forward to, as in the secret of happiness. Someone to love, something to do, something to look forwards to. With those three things, you have it all.
- Ted Treen
September 20, 2016 at 5:51 pm -
I’m so glad to read that you’re not being “all wan, pale & thin”; and continuing to be a thorn in the side of the lunacy that passes for public service these days.
“Lang may yer lam reek” as the hairy-arsed Caledonians are wont to utter in between deep-fried Mars bars.
- Carol42
September 20, 2016 at 6:14 pm -
Glad to hear you are feeling better Anna. I am surprised that your GP didn’t call you in when he read reports that the emphysema had got worse, I know if I have an abnormal result on blood tests they always call me to come in. Re smoking, I decided after my lung cancer surgery that at my age I just didn’t want to stop something I had been doing for 50 years and enjoyed despite all the dire warnings! My recent six year scan was fine and I have no signs of cancer or COPD. Meantime my friend is on end of life care for lung cancer despite never having smoked even one cigarette nor did her husband so who knows. There is quite a lot of evidence that people giving up smoking after a lifetime often develop serious health problems, the theory being that the body is totally acclimatised to smoking and goes a bit mad when it is suddenly stopped. Can I ask Anna is the lung cancer new or mets from your original rare cancer? I think it’s wonderful you are doing so well and long may you continue to defy medical science.
Carol - JS2
September 20, 2016 at 7:02 pm -
Glad to see you back, we were all a little worried to say the least. I hope you will be around for a long time to come, Glad they have found an inhaler that helps you to breath, which will bring you some relief. Take good care of yourself xx
- Don Cox
September 20, 2016 at 7:34 pm -
It’s good to see you back. I was getting worried.
- Pericles Xanthippou
September 20, 2016 at 7:39 pm -
I must admit to a feeling of anxiety when ever Mme. Raccoon absents herself from the bar; glad to learn that she’s preparing a broadside to starboard, anyway.
Suffolker: “I’ve always creosoted my garden fences to keep them in order, and a similar treatment seemed to keep coughs and colds at bay. …”
Thank you, Suffolker; enjoyed that … not so sure there ain’t a lot of truth in it too!
“… all the learned books say I am supposed to be thin and wan and listless … Tough titty! I’m quite enjoying bucking their system. …” I wonder whether — assuming I could be bothered — I could still manage this kind of thing (with or without back-packs, utility poles &c.). Good on you, sport (as they say in Australia)! Anna RacKoi indeed!
(Not that I’m here all day — why must the nightclub-bouncer class, which seems to runs so much of to-day’s society, allude to ‘all day, every day’ by the ugly term ‘24/7’ and, more to the point, the mainstream media adopt that class’s ghastly diction anyway? — but I seem to have missed this Tommy Twelvetoes. It seems I ought to count myself lucky. I agree with Mr. Higham: regroup.)
Come di Rossa ditto: “It seems you have to manage your own care these days.” Ain’t that the truth?!
ΠΞ
- The Blocked Dwarf
September 20, 2016 at 8:13 pm -
On the subject of smoking , there was a bit on the German TV news last night celebrating the 25th anniversary of Ötzi’s discovery .I shall explain for those too lazy to keep on archaeology events; A couple of, no doubt pissed (‘altitude sick’ as people what climb mountains call it) German tourists found the mummified body of a stone age man in the Austrian Alps (although it was later discovered they had unknowingly staggered across the border so now those Italian Johnnies habeas the corpenetto). His body was sooo well preserved having spent 3 000 years in a glacier (Captain Paedophile eat your heart and your fishyfingers outs!) that even his stomach contents were identifiable (No SC, not a Big McBronto with dactyl fries! ).
Anyways to cut a long dwarvish rambling short, the German news article was playing the ‘what has Ötzi done for us’ card. They wheeled out some Professor to explain that Ötzi had been discovered to be suffering from hardening of the arteries at age ca. 46. As even the most ardent, rabid Anti Smoking nazi piglet can’t claim that Ötzi was a smoker or passive smoker, they -the world of science- had realised that the hardening of the arteries must be a genetic thing. That’s not a direct quote but near enough.
After that I had to go downstairs and lit a pipe (a115 year old Oom Paul from the Boer War thank you for asking) to celebrate…wish for the next bog-man to be found to have lung cancer.
- gareth
September 20, 2016 at 8:17 pm -
Was chatting to my ageing mum yesterday. Recalled my brother’s birth day (at home, mid ’60s, a nice warm day). And our GP – who’s name (surname only of course) we all knew because he was “the doctor” – dropped by, unbidden, on a Saturday, just to see how she & he were doing. Without appointment and (presumably) without charging. Would this happen now? Even though we are today (apparently) three times more wealthy in real terms than then?
- English Pensioner
September 21, 2016 at 10:42 am -
Those were the days! I remember in the late 1940’s, one Sunday afternoon the lady next door collapsed. No phones, so I was given a note and told to get on my bike and fetch the doctor. Banged on his front door, handed over the note. The doctor grabbed his bag, got out his bike and said ‘lead the way’. Oh for service like that these days!
- English Pensioner
- Mr Pooter
September 20, 2016 at 8:40 pm -
I too was diagnosed with emphysema after I stopped smoking 25 years ago. It troubled me a bit to begin with but not after I was started on a steroid inhaler which has made all the difference ever since.
Other times other customs – the army used to give we lucky squaddies a free issue of fifty cigarettes a week. I wonder what soldiers use these days to calm the nerves.
- Mudplugger
September 20, 2016 at 8:57 pm -
The dear Mrs Mudplugger works in the healthcare sector and, from her almost daily rantings, I can confirm that the inside of the NHS looks even worse than it does from the outside. Any things which happen successfully do so despite ‘the system’, not because of it, hence it should be no surprise when things so often look inefficient, ineffective, chaotic or downright illogical.
Although the NHS may think it’s in the health business, with 60 million ‘cases’ on its books, every one of them different, it needs to realise that it’s really in the information business. If it could only get its act together to bring all its information sources together (about patients, staff, resources, schedules etc), it would then have a chance of delivering co-ordinated medical services to those who pay so much towards it. As it is, and with its defiantly regional structure and vested fiefdoms, it doesn’t stand a snowball in Hell’s chance, and it would be a very brave politician who told the real truth and set about fixing it properly. Jeremy Typing-Error is not that politician.
There are some tremendously dedicated folk working at all parts of the NHS who genuinely want to deliver the best service and outcomes for their customers, but they are sadly let down every day by the very system in which they work and by the dire, visionless management under whom they toil. There seems no prospect of this improving in our lifetimes. - Eddy
September 20, 2016 at 10:33 pm -
It’s good to hear from you again Anna. I hope you will be around for a lot longer. Planting those daffodil bulbs seems like a nice investment in the future. I look forward to reading how well they do.
- David
September 21, 2016 at 7:47 am -
If you give up smoking you should have baking soda. The only soda water that has bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) is Schweppes. Altering the PH of your body stops all illnesses, and the NHS are using it again to protect your organs and stops cells proliferating. My friend who is the longest living renal patient is given baking soda tablets by the NHS. http://www.nhs.uk/news/2009/07July/Pages/Bakingsodaforkidneypatients.aspx
- Bandini
September 21, 2016 at 11:02 pm -
Best keep her away from your cider vinegar ‘cure’ then, David – it’d take her head off!
(P.S. It’s ‘pH’ not ‘PH’; still, no need to doubt your crudentials, no sirree no.)
- Bandini
- tdf
September 21, 2016 at 9:53 am -
Good to see you back.
- Major Bonkers
September 21, 2016 at 1:14 pm -
Buggery.
- Bandini
September 21, 2016 at 10:54 pm -
It’s good to see you back and up and at ’em, Anna.
- Michael
September 22, 2016 at 12:14 am -
Gawd bless ya missus.
- Michael
September 22, 2016 at 12:16 am -
Sorry, tried to put that in “bad cockney accent” html tags, but the anti-spam software must have snaffled them… You’ll have to imagine them…
- Michael
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