Well, today’s the day I was supposed to go into hospital for a back op, and instead I’m sitting here blogging away. Naturally, my body has decided to mark this happy date by resurrecting the sciatic pain as part of its ongoing Campaign To Piss Me Off, and it’s been doing so very successfully for the last few days.
It’s nowhere near as bad as before (and I’m not taking any painkillers of any description at the moment), and crucially it seems to go away again after a brisk walk – something that definitely wasn’t the case over the last few months. It’s fairly obvious that I’m not out of the woods yet, but I’m pretty sure that even if the pain returns with a vengeance I’m not going to reschedule the operation. After all, it’s gone away once and if it returns, it’ll go away again.
I’m still pissed off about it, mind you ;-)
There’s an interesting article in today’s Glasgow Herald about the Scottish NHS, by the way (I won’t bother linking as they don’t seem to keep content up after 24 hours): our health service is so far behind the English NHS it beggars belief. According to The Herald: “While just one patient in England waited more than six months to see a consultant for a hospital appointment last year, 45,056 people in Scotland faced such a lengthy wait.”
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0 responses to “I’m not in hospital, hip hip hooray”
An acquaintance of mine has a back problem that sounds rather similar to yours (at least in symptoms). Has just been told that the wait to see a consultant is over two years. My guess is that the waiting list between the consultant and the op is currently subject to a Whitehall target and has been reduced dramatically. Yay.
That sounds about right. I can’t remember if I blogged about it but there was a letter in the Herald last week from a consultant at one of glasgow’s hospitals, who pointed out that there are multiple waits (not waiting lists) now. There’s:
1. The wait between a GP referral and seeing a consultant (usually several weeks, can be months)
2. The wait for diagnostic tests, eg MRI (usually months, can be more than a year)
3. The wait for the results (usually weeks)
4. The wait for an appointment with the surgeon (months, sometimes longer)
5. The wait for the operation (months)
Apparently, only number 5 counts in terms of waiting lists.
Pleased you’re not in hospital. Fingers crossed that the gets lost eventually.
Back pain is an absolute bugger.
Thanks :-) Despite blog appearances to the contrary, I’m quite cheery about all of this. Apart from when I try to get out of the chair and invent new swear words…
Yeah, my best wishes too.