Another week, another hospital

or

A lot of effort to go to for a day off work

This time it's the time of Cappagh where I had a ganz osteotomy in 2007.  I've been coming here once a year ever since for a check-up.  Each time it's the same.  You sign in at the registration desk and then make your way down to the x-ray department.  It's a considerable walk for someone with mobility isssues which is rather bizarre as this is the National Orthopedic Hospital and a fair number of cripples grace its doors daily.

After the x-ray department which is, one must say, extremely efficient, you make the long treck back to the registration area.  This year, there are some new notices in place.  Graphs helpfully inform us that the cost of missed appointments, calculated at €80 each, came to €50,080 in 2011 and in the current year up to September, came to €42,320.  That's 626 missed appointments in 2011 and 529 in the first three quarters of 2012.  Who are these people who miss appointments?  It takes so long to get one!

However, I can understand how it could happen.  For instance, I was sick all Sunday night with what I diagnosed as food poisening, due to having consumed some seriously dodgy ham.  Not, Winter Vomiting Bug as an idiot nurse tried to convince me.  Anyway, if my appointment had been Monday, I'd have had to cancel at the last minute.  Also, if I'd had an appointment last Spring I may have had to cancel as I spent much ofthat time hanging out in Tallaght Hospital.

There's a huge difference between the two institutions.  Cappagh is an older hospital, more specialised, more compact.  While you still prepare yourself for a long wait, there's not the same mill of people hanging around and there's nobody sick, as such.  Tallaght is characterised by trolleys zipping around and shuffling patients in pyjamas sneaking out to have a forbidden smoke.

This time, in Cappagh, I'm in the consulting room at 13:50, a mere 25 minutes after my appointment time, although I arrived 15 minutes early and there's no sign of a doctor until 14:30.  Today I get a whole 5 minutes of his time, as I have to update them on my health issues.  I'm fine for now.  Come back again next year.  

This hour and a half of hanging around is a significant improvement on Tallaght.  My record from appointment time to seeing a doctor there is almost four hours.  Four hours where you daren't get a coffee and plea to people to listen out for your name if you have to use the toilet facilities, for fear you'll miss your turn.

Cappagh is a much calmer proposition.  The out-patients is separated from the wards and there's less wandering about of patients as many are there for hip or knee procedures.  The food is also much better in Cappagh.  By much better, I mean that it's actually edible.  In Tallaght, I had to coerce friends and family to smuggle me in wittles.

Tallaght is chaotic, with inedible food, lots of hustle and bustle and files and records regularly go missing.  However a good proportion of the nursing (although by no means all) and medical staff are conscientious and caring and doing their best.  (The surgical staff, as with many hospitals are mainly arrogant and more interested in their technical expertise than your health).  Unfortunately, despite many good reports from patients who've been there, I found the opposite to be true in Cappagh.  There were a lot of agency staff while I was there who just didn't seem to care or think it was their job to look after you.

Given the choice between being fairly well, having good food and being in a calm environment, to being very ill, unable to eat the 'food' served, immersed in chaos, but with staff who at least give the impression of caring, I have to say, having experienced both, I'd go for illness, starvation and chaos in Tallaght anytime.

Early Hospital Experiences

or

Those were the days, my friends

My earliest memories are of being in hospital.  I spent a lot of time there as a young child due to developmental acetabular dysplasia i.e. born with dislocated or 'click' hips.  These early memeories aren't unpleasant.  Every time someone came to visit me, they brought me a present.  This was mainly in the evening.

I rarely had visitors in the afternoon as my parents and other potential visitors worked.  I didn't mind (parents of young, sick children, take note) I didn't expect visitors, but when my Gran used her bus pass to make the trip to Dublin, it was an unexpected bonus.  I still remember one particular occassion when she brought me a packet of Jelly Tots.  I was young enough to still be in a cot, located on this occassion in the far corner of the ward, and I gleefully ripped open the packet and spilt them over the bed, setting up a game of Hide and Seek.  You become quite imaginative in your games when you're confined to bed!

There were unpleasant times of course.  I hated being on traction, forced to stay on my back for months, but it did leave me with the enviable skill of being able to eat and drink whilst lying flat on my back - a skill that would come in handy years later.

I still hate blood tests and injections.  My veins don't like them either.  For some reason, they hide whenever a needle comes into view.  I remember one time, I was in the bed beside the door and jerked as they were taking blood.  It got on the sheets and the Ward Nurse said I was to be left in the bloody sheets to be taught her lesson.  To my young eyes, the sheets were soaked in blood, but it was probably just a few drops.  I had nightmares for a long time after that.  That ward nurse was scary but the Sister was kindly.

The Adelaide was my home and at that time Jacob's Factory was still across the road from it.  We could look out the windows in the Children's Ward to watch out for the broken biscuits being sent over for our Tea.  Not that they like giving tea to the children.  I was the exception.  I horrified the nurses by asking for coffee at the tender age of 2 or 3 (blame my Gran), so tea was a compromise.

This was also the time of my first boyfriend, Jerome, an 'older man' by 3 years with similar issues to me but more complications.  I spent many a happy hour in his bed - playing with lego.  I was only a toddler!

Nights weren't too bad either.  There was a blue hue off the night lights and there was always a nurse at the desk in the corner with one of those bendy lamps.  I wasn't a good sleeper even back then, but I always found comfort and reassurance, glancing over to the nurse in the corner.

I got out of hospital around the time Elvis died.  I distinctly remember it being discussed on the radio and mistakenly thought he was King of Ireland.  Just a few days later I started Junior Infants, being carried as my legs still weren't strong enough for the stairs.  From one strange world to another!  Looking back at this time through adult eyes, it may seem very traumatic and even distressing to parents of young children.  For me, it was all I knew.  It was normal.  I couldn't imagine my pre-school years any other way.

I'm not 22 any more :(

or

On Music and Ageing

 

I was in my car the other day, listening to the radio, when Alanis Morissette's Hand in My Pocket came on air. I was immediately transported back to the summer (possibly Autumn, memory can be fickle) of 1995 and the impact her album, Jagged Little Pill, made on me.

At the time, I was very disillusioned with the excuse for music that was making the Irish and UK charts. It seemed to be dominated by manufactured boy bands who could neither sing nor play instruments. I was listening to Bowie, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles, Bob Dylan, Bob Marlay, Iron Maiden, Tom Waits, Nick Drake, Aerosmith, Indigo Girls and Lir (they played some great gigs in Whelan back then). With the exception of the last three, they all belonged to a much earlier era. Oh, and Portishead. How could I forget Portishead (Reminded by CT ringing me - I have Strangers as her ring tone). There was very little new music that spoke to me.

Then came Alanis. The same age, roughly, as me, her anger and pathos resonated. I got her straight away. I felt that I could have written the songs myself. She could sing, she played instruments, she wrote her own songs and she was a heterosexual female.  A seemingly rare breed at the time.  Even if the events in her songs hadn't specifically happened to me, I knew the emotion behind it. And listening to the lyrics of "Hand in My Pocket" last week, I realised how much things have changed in those 17 years.


I could have written that song (well, if I'd had enough talent) in my early 20s. Nearly every word of it applied to me. But now everything has flipped over. Take this opening excerpt as an example:

           I'm broke by I'm happy
            I'm poor but I'm kind
            I'm short but I'm healthy, yeah"

Well, now I have money. While I'm not unhappy, I've lost that optimistic, seize every moment, life is full of possibilities feeling that I had at 22. I don't feel kind towards people - I'm grouchy and intolerant and my expectations are too high. And this year, I sure as hell haven't been healthy.

Even the chorus bit is mocking me - 

          'cause I've got one hand in my pocket
           And the other one is flicking a cigarette

I had to give up cigarettes after getting pneumonia in January and ever since then the world has become a so much darker place. Oh, to go back to the I feel drunk but I'm sober days instead of I feel sober but I'm drunk which is a more apt description of me nowadays.

I wonder how Alanis is doing...