A dose of clap for the NHS

Don't always agree with her, but here's the DT's Allison Pearson telling how it is with the NHS ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/women/life/telegraph-readers-agree-nhs-abandoned-many-patients-need/ 

This, from poor Eric, was typical: “I was diagnosed with Parkinsons’s disease in December by my GP and booked in to see a specialist in April. That appointment was cancelled because of Covid-19 and as yet I have not seen anyone. I was informed that the sooner I started on the appropriate drug the better my chance of delaying the symptoms. I now have difficulty walking and am not on any medication because the first medication prescribed over the phone didn’t help and, therefore, I have to wait to see another doctor.”

A disturbing picture quickly built up of very unwell people, many in considerable pain, managing as best they could after being rebuffed by elusive GPs or turned away by local hospitals, many of which now stand virtually empty.

Several readers drew my attention to incredibly sad cases where deaths could have been avoided. “We lost a good friend,” says Pam, “He suffered peritonitis as a result of a strangulated colon. His daughter spoke on the phone to his GP who prescribed medication for constipation! Despite the fact that a previously-arranged appointment for a colonoscopy was postponed. A face-to-face consultation with a doctor would have had a very different result.”

Rita points out that her husband’s cancer treatment, which was clearly keeping him alive, “was withdrawn on the basis that coming to hospital would expose him to Covid and it would likely kill him. The sheer hypocrisy of their approach left me speechless and convinced my family that the real danger was not Covid but their lack of concern for a 75-year-old man with terminal cancer.” 

Many of you were both angry and incredulous that your local surgery appeared to think it was acceptable not to see sick people for the duration. “I call mine Fort Laramie,” jibed Christopher, “because it is closed and hatches battened down. The purpose is to keep patients out. It even looks like a fort because of narrow slit windows just big enough for the defenders to fire their Winchester 73s.”

One husband and wife team, both NHS consultants, said: “We have both had to deliver devastating diagnoses via phone and tried to support families who could not be with their dying loved ones. I don’t know a single doctor who finds this lack of human contact acceptable. It is clear the managers are seizing on this to make remote consultation the new normal – it’s much cheaper although the health costs of missed diagnoses have not been quantified. I have never joined the clapping as it’s a poor substitute for proper funding, accurate information and PPE. Someone needs to start listening to doctors whose fears and frustrations are not reflected in the media.”

60,000 dead in 3 months.  10,000 starved and dehydrated to death every year for decades.

A latter-day Auschwitz hiding in plain view.

SoD

Comments

[Mayfly]

Yes, it seems a cull of the population is occurring. Along with people who are already sick, the number of potential suicides amongst those of us who are looking at a future devoid of a job, money and a home will be higher than any pandemic. A loss of life in the 50 -68 demographic means no need for health care, no need for a pension, frees up property, passes wealth down to the young - all things the government wants to see.

Add on the breeding ground for bacteria they call a face mask, and the potential is looking quite bad. I pray the winter cull takes me, it's better than the future I can see ahead.

[Whyaxye]

Just to add to the list of anecdotes. My mother in law developed a nasty lesion on the top of her head last year. She was sent to a specialist who was particularly concerned because she also had persistent very painful ear-aches. He said she needed the lesion to be sorted ASAP.

Then...Covid. So cancellation. Then nothing. Not a word.

After over six months of waiting, they suddenly called her in and did the op. All seems to be well. I guess they got bored with sitting round wearing face-masks in empty hospitals.

[David Duff]

Dear Ms. Mayfly, it has been a long time since we last met up but I remember you well - which is fairly incredible given my dodgy memory these days! - so I do wish you well and hope that you sneak past the worst hazards of this Covid-world.

[Glesga]

Ms Mayfly, Your time will come for the great breadbasket in the sky. Do not wish your time away. When I am in pain I have a few drams and plod on in the same old fashion as my ancestors.

[Loz]

And to illustrate what's possible with competent governance, in Norway life expectancy has actually gone up! ...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/15/norways-coronavirus-success-nail-coffin-funeral-homes-no-work/

While the coronavirus pandemic is ravaging the world, some of Norway's funeral homes have found themselves without work and have turned to the state for aid.

Due to declining mortality and cancelled funeral ceremonies, half a dozen Norwegian undertakers - according to a public registry - have turned to the state for help after the initial success of Norway's handling of Covid-19 left them struggling to make ends meet.

For the Lande family, who have made caring for the dead their livelihood for three generations, this has never happened before.

"When the measures against the coronavirus were imposed, it turned out that it not only broke the back of the coronavirus but other viruses too," Erik Lande, now head of the family business in the south of the country, told AFP.

"So much so that some of the old and sick people who would have died in normal circumstances are still around."

So by crushing Covid swiftly with immediate and efficient actioning of the 10 commandments ...

1. Masks
2. PPE
3. Testing
4. Track and trace
5. App
6. Lockdown
7. ICU's
8. Borders
9. Care home isolation
10. Co-operation with EU

... plucky little Norway also crushed the 'flu, pneumonia, sepsis and all the other viruses and bugs that off the wrinkles before their time.

Perhaps Blighty's zero out of ten performance on the 10 commandments is a dastardly Remainer trick to thin out the Brexit voting wrinklies and lay the foundations for another referendum!

SoD

[Glesga]

We are already cooperating with European countries.

[Mayfly]

Thank you for the good wishes, I appreciate that we have only one life, but I simply feel that living with no money, no home, no stability and no purpose is not life at all. Regrettably, drowning my sorrows would be a swifter journey to being penniless (I very much enjoy a drink. Very much. Very, very much).

It would be interesting to know why Norway's economy is not in free fall right now, and why masks are apparently the most important thing for society, despite the fact that they did not appear to help China at all. And finally why I have experienced five people now who were in direct contact with this incredibly infectious virus and yet failed to catch it.

[Whitewall]

Mayfly, it has been a long time since I've seen you. Sorry you are in such dire straits. Surely you have family nearby to help you? Wish I could do something to help. You are a fine lady.

Robert

[Glesga]

Ms Mayfly, you are alive and posting. Enjoy the bevvy. A friend of mine had split from his wife and was suicidal. He put a rope around his neck and jumped from his verandah. He broke his leg as the rope was too long.

[Mayfly]

Hello Robert (Whitewall), I've just re-read my comment and realised I posted in the grips of rather strong emotions. I get frustrated at this whole "wear a mask for no good reason", "let's force people to stay at home rather than let them decide for themselves" and so on. I haven't yet lost my job, or my flat etc., it's just that I have been furloughed for 4 months whilst the rest of my company has been back for the last two. I have been applying for jobs since March, no one wants to know. I looked at what benefits I can get - £40 a week. I don't want to go through my savings, get to the point of losing my home, go through the homelessness rigmarole and then have the council find me a home when for a paltry sum of money in comparison, I could keep my home until maybe I could get some work again. Of course, all the government help is for the Young, who don't have mortgages, so I have to wait a while to see if I can get any work at all.

Thank you though for reaching out, it was very kind of you. I have phoned for a doctor's appointment for this afternoon.

Thank you Glesga as well - have a whiskey on me.......

[Whitewall]

Mayfly, I saw this story a while ago:
https://www.msn.com/en-us/lifestyle/fashion/british-fashion-council-calls-for-government-support-as-240000-fashion-jobs-at-risk/ar-BB16NN0b?li=BBnb7Kz

I guess fashion is crucial in the grand scheme of things!

Good luck!

[JK]

Mayfly,

https://alfinnextlevel.wordpress.com/2020/07/13/the-next-virus-may-not-be-so-kind/

Just figured I'd put my 2¢ in (whether it's any help dunno).

Don't reckon it's gonna have any effect whatsoever on our overseers overseeing us. Their jobs would appear, secure absolutely.

[Loz]

Mayfly,

I went through a bad patch a few years back and didn't want to hand back the keys to my gaff. So I rented out my flat and moved into a spare room a mate of mine had going for 18 months. The net-off between rent collected and rent paid kept life's economic ratchet in place. I had a bloody good laugh too, and when I moved back in to my flat I rented my spare room to, yes you've probably guessed, a stream of Inky-Blinky Dahlinkies who became life long friends and without whom Fluffbun wouldn't have happened.

And do go for the meds. Talking therapies are BS, as one of the quacks said to me, "You can't think your way out of this". Prozac good, newer stuff even better. I'm somewhat of an SSRS connoisseur having given most of them a blast at some point. In the current circs the anti-anxiety ones are probably a good call, sertraline and citalopram for example.

Very best wishes,

SoD

[JK]

And Mayfly, riffing of SoD's prescribing (sure hope you don't get yore ass ina sling Loz!)

There's a drug over here tradename Lyrica™ - my 'Her Ladyship' got prescribed when the drug first hit the market and the marketers was saying it was good for everything from bad hair days to going to the trouble of getting one's knickers down to do a bog only to find it was a gas pain - 'Her Ladyship's car had been t-boned by another car doing ... well imagine a car being between this car instead of there just being the roundabout:

https://dailytimewaster.blogspot.com/2020/07/heh_16.html

Anyway 'over here' now our FDA has finally recognized Lyrica's not as all-efficacious as originally licensed - (sorta like 'Mother's Little Helper': Desoxyn or Quaaludes were when I visited back home after my first WESPAC [Thank God I was even then subject to drug testing!) - anyway if its a pharmaceutical fills the bill Lyrica is it.

Just don't drink or drive while it's in your system. Come to think of it don't do anything more possibly hazardous than maybe a crossword puzzle on a blackboard using chalk - while seated.

My advice?

Lean on your social (even D&N) network.

And some reasonable drink.

(Actually Mayfly, in real life I ... with the possible exception of a three-day-window around seven specific dates on the calendar ... the drunk I play on the internet. My mileage may vary.)

Disclosure: I've long been prescribed Valium (for one of its in-the-literature recognized 'off-label' utilities I'd point out though.)