Guest Blogger: Adventures with the NHS

Hi, this is Erik with a guest post to Kate's blog.  As those of you who read Kate's last post already know, our first week here turned out to be a little rockier than we expected.  Kate gave you the story - poison ivy on my knee that became infected.  Trip to the hospital, and instead of a bottle of antibiotics, I was admitted and spent the next five days and nights there receiving iv antibiotics every 6 hours.  The strange thing was that I never felt sick, never ran a fever, never had abnormal blood work - as far as I was informed anyway.  And yet, they kept me in the hospital anyway.

There are a few reasons for this, I think:  1) My knee really looked bad!  It was oozing all sorts of gunk, there was a big dark red patch that was warm to the touch, and the redness was slowly creeping up my leg.  Not really good signs, any of them.  2) On top of that, the antibiotics did not really seem to be making much of a difference.  Finally, after day three or four, the oozing subsided, but the leg was still red and hot (and still is today, by the way, although, not quite as hot as it was before) and 3) the hospital was still waiting on the results of the cultures they took on the day after I was admitted to determine what kind of bacteria they were dealing with and what kind of anti-biotics it was susceptible to.  4) After my first night there, I was moved to a post-surgical ward because they didn't have space in the "medic" ward, and while it was relatively nice and quiet there, it meant that I was somewhat off the beaten track for the doctors who needed to see me. The doctors would generally make their rounds once a day and in the first four days I was there, I never saw the same doctor twice. Being there over the weekend didn't help at all either.  I had to request to see a doctor on Saturday and I'm not sure that I even saw a doc on Sunday.  In the five days there, I think I saw a total of about 12 different doctors.  Only one of them made a repeat visit.  That was the guy who finally said I could go home on Monday evening with oral antibiotics.  5) They don't really know what poison ivy is here.  They just don't have it.  So, I think a lot of what they thought was a bacterial infection was just a really bad reaction to poison ivy, which I am still dealing with by the way.

Ok, so that is the medical saga.  On Monday, the one doctor who finally made a repeat visit and who looked at my normal blood work and followed up with the microbiology lab and found out that the reason it was taking so long to get a result there from the bacterial culture was because no bacteria were growing (probably because they didn't take the culture until I had already been on i.v. antibiotics for about 18 hours and they were doing there job.)

Now, for my take on the National Healthcare Service (NHS).  1) They are overworked and understaffed.  2) They don't have a whole lot of incentive to be responsive.  3) The patient has very little say in their course of treatment. 4) Sharing a room with 5 other people is a pain in the ass.  To be honest, most of them were not that bad, but the first night I was there, the guy next to me was snoring so loudly I couldn't hear myself think, much less try to sleep, and he was a drunk who came in to be detoxified and was getting sick every 30 minutes or so.  Up in the surgical ward, one of my ward-mates was on the road to dementia and was talking to everyone who was in the room like they were long lost friends or relatives.  "Phillip, is that you?  What are you doing way over there across the room? Phillip?"  He also did not like staying in his bed at night even though he couldn't stand up by himself, so every hour or so, the nurses would have to come running and try to keep him from getting up, or pick him up off the floor.

Suffice it to say, that I am very glad to be back at Apartment 4, Woodleigh Mansions, our home away from home here.  I can't even tell you how much I missed Kate and Malcolm and Soren while I was in the hospital.  A short visit each evening was not enough.  Thanks to all of you who sent well wishes by e-mail and who left comments on Kate's blog or on Facebook.  We're hoping that the next few months go much more smoothly than the first week.