Where are you bleeding from?

Where you bleeding from? 

I think as one gets older one should always try and have new experiences. New sensations and new adventures to help invigorate one and keep one alive and the adrenaline pumping.

Having said this, last Sunday morning I had a new experience I could happily have done without. At the age of 56 years of age I had my first nosebleed. It’s a long time since I’ve seen so much of my own blood, and fresh and glistening on the bathroom floor it looked very very red.

A second nosebleed on the Monday, plus an overnight emission (Careful!), that did our 300 thread count Egyptian cotton frette pillows absolutely no good at all, meant that it was time to pop along to the GP.

Easier said than done. I don't know whether it’s the 50th anniversary of Doctor Who that has taken me back in time, but I have happy memories of walking up to the doctor's surgery with my mother at surgery time and sitting in the waiting room, to be seen in order of arrival. An order decided not by some middle-aged menopausal receptionist, but by the people sitting in the waiting room themselves, done with good grace and courtesy.

Okay so the chances of modern society being able to work that out for themselves is probably a little much, but it does seem to have gone the other way. The power in the NHS does seem to be in the wrong hands.

In all my encounters with the National Health Service over the last couple of years, when you’re actually in front of the doctor, or talking to the nurse, you get the feeling that you're with an extremely experienced and proficient professional. Getting to see that doctor and nurse does seem to be where the problems lie.

Richard and I have been lucky with GP practices. In Balham we were lucky enough to live next door to a practice that have been designated a “beacon practice”.  It was easy to get an appointment, and we were lucky enough to see a fantastic female doctor.

Since moving to Sydenham, we been registered with the local GP practice and it's not brilliant. The doctors are great when you get to see them, but it seems the practice has adopted a system designed to prevent as many patients as possible from getting to see a doctor. You used to be able to ring up on the day at 8 AM and get an appointment for that day. Now you ring at 8 AM to ask for an appointment for the following day. If the person you're talking to does decide you're ill enough, then they will give you an appointment for the same day. So living in our postcode now requires a certain psychic quality as to when you’re going to be unwell.

And who is the person who is making this decision as to when to grant you an appointment on the telephone?  A doctor who’s done 5 to 7 years of training? An extremely proficient professional nurse practitioner?  Sadly not. It’s a receptionist.

 Several years ago one of the role-play jobs I did was helping to train doctor’s receptionists in telephone technique. The people who ran the course were quite open about the fact that the receptionist’s main objective was to persuade the person they didn’t need to see a doctor. To some extent one can understand this.  Lots of people run to the GP at the slightest provocation,  and many surgeries, now oversubscribed, need to find some way to perform basic triage on callers.  Though it does make you wonder just how often and how long the hours of a GP are these days?  There are four partners  and three salaried GPs listed at our practice, and yet the paucity of appointments available is absolutely appalling.  No wonder people are turning up at A&E departments instead. We are incredibly lucky in that our local A&E department is actually Kings which features in the brilliant Channel 4 series “24 hours in A&E”. Given the choice between that and our local GPs, I know where I’d feel safest.  Kings College every time. 

Obviously the fix red eye feature didn't work here!

On this particular day I did manage to convince a receptionist that never having had a nosebleed for 56 years, and then suddenly having three in a period of twenty four bours might warrant an appointment with the doctor.

 The doctor, of course, was incredibly nice, professional, and had a manner that gave me great confidence and a post-cold infection of the nose was diagnosed as the possible source.

 Everything seemed to be clearing up until Wednesday evening when I managed to head-butt  a wall. Not, I must add, in frustration at the attitude of doctors receptionists, though that has often been the case. This was due to some slippery shoes on a wet pavement in London’s Chinatown as I was heading to the screening of “Him and Her - The Wedding”.

Blood poured from my nose and my head reeled in confusion from contact with bricks. A trio of young Spanish señoritas came to my aid with tissues, and I went on my way. Mercifully by Saturday one of my eyes was displaying signs of bruising - surely the best way to get the sympathy I deserve.

At least my contact with the medical profession, and the gentle Florence Nightingale’s of Madrid did not produce this response which Richard came across in an episode of “999 What’s your emergency?” and which still makes us laugh every time we think of it.

Caller Ambulance please.  I’m bleeding.

Operator Okay. Where you bleeding from?

Caller Poland!