Praise be

Friday 13th August 2010

On Tuesday I received a letter from the hospital regarding my next appointment to see Kermit. They regretted to inform me that my appointment for the 10th September has had to be cancelled and gave me a new date of the 24th September.

I wasn’t best pleased as I had already changed the appointment to coincide with John being on holiday from work.

I rang the hospital and explained the problem.
“I’m afraid all of Mr Green’s appointments for the week beginning the 6th September have been cancelled”, said the appointments clerk.
“Do you have anything for the following week”, I asked, hopefully.
She punched away on her keyboard.
“Nothing for the 13th… the 14th is full… so is 15th… and the 16th… and nothing for the 17th…”.
“I see”, I replied, disappointed.
“Are you available on the 17th September at 9am”, she asked.
“Yes”, I answered.
“The 17th is yours”, she said, “I’ve cancelled the patient who had that appointment and reissued them with a new date”.

I did feel awful for stealing someone’s appointment time but I had had my fair share of cancelled appointments so it was time I had some payback…

Last Monday I rang the hospital because I had not heard anything following the MRI scan on my back two weeks ago. I was informed that the scan still hadn’t been sent across to the consultant, so an appointment can’t be made until the consultant had looked at the results.

Given that scans and x-rays are now on computer it was inexcusable that it should take this long for them to be sent to consultants. All it needed was for the radiographer to press ‘send’ on her computer. If the ‘Bionic Vet’ could receive his MRI scans in a matter of seconds after asking for them from his radiographer, the same should happen with the NHS….

This morning I rang the hospital again about my scan results. Inadvertently I had asked to speak to ‘The Man Himself’s’* secretary (I’ve got that many consultants on the go, it was hard at times to remember who’s who….). After getting my details on the computer she found out that my scan had finally been received a couple of days ago. However no action had been taken on it so it was just sitting there waiting for someone to forward it to my back consultant.
“No problem”, she said, “I’ll forward it to your consultant so you should get an appointment very shortly”.

Instead of complaining about the NHS, as I usually do, I am praising them for not only doing their job but also going over and above what is expected of them. Thank you.

* the consultant I was seeing for my knee (except I never got to see him....)