Back on Patricia Hewitt's waiting list

Posted in Janine's blog on ,

No food and drink frorm midnight last night. Checked in at Bart's 7.30 this morning. Chat with surgeons. Paperwork. Observations. Nap. Read paper. Sudoku. Start re-reading Lynne Segal's classic 'Is the Future Female?'. Watch Aussie soaps. Time passing. Hungry, thirsty.

4.30pm. Operation cancelled. The bloke who was first on the slab this morning turned out to be more complicated than anticipated, and the docs have run out of time.

I'm well upset. My family's schedule has been organised around the surgery today, and it is hard to unorganise and then re-organise again for an as-yet-unspecified date in roughly six weeks time. And on a more emotional level, we had come to see today as the beginning of putting my accident - and all the trauma that came with it - behind us, and moving on.

It's not the fault of Bart's, or the doctors or nurses, of course. But if the NHS had more money, fewer private parasites, and therefore more doctors, then they could organise surgery with more slack in the schedule, so one added complication doesn't knock over a row of dominoes and send the last one off the edge.

So, back on Patricia Hewitt's waiting list.

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