Johnny’s Going Home…………Eventually!!

It’s all guns blazing now to get the heck out of here. This I have found from past experience to be the most frustrating, annoying and generally negative period of your stay in hospital. Maybe if you were to suddenly be told that you were being kicked out I could understand the waiting around or if for example they changed the protocol involved in discharge, but how come it always ALWAYS!!!! Takes hours and hours to sort out. I think the earliest I have ever been discharged must be about 2.30pm and the latest would have been around 10pm. The average seems to be around tea time sort of 5pm ish. If you try and work out all the elements involved in being discharged they will never equate to the actual time it has taken to complete all of them. Here is just an example for you from one of my recent stays at Heath Towers, bearing in mind all involved knew the day before that I was to be going home.

Tasks needed to be completed and time needed to do them :

Blood Levels Taken and Checked (including time for Microbiology to Process the samples) 1 ½ hours

Drugs including Doctor Writing out TTH form, Nurse or pharmacist collecting all drugs from room and taking to pharmacy if needed and to replenish and replace any drugs needed too take. Bearing in mind they have an ample stock of most used drugs on the ward and there is a Pharmacist based on the ward every morning till 12 noon to complete this task. I guess a real conservative figure would be 2 hours and that’s taking your time.

Doctor’s ward visit to make sure all is well and you can in fact escape the clutches of all the nurses and doctors who incidentally are all begging and pleading you for stay. Yeah Right !!!!!!!! Usually takes all of about 5-10 minutes.

So barring any last minute hiccups etc like maybe needing a blood transfusion or potassium , magnesium iv which can take over 4 hours why then does it take a minimum of around 5 hours to complete that is if you take for granted that the staff as in doctors etc etc don’t start work till 9am. You can also factor into this that the blood samples are taken and sent for analysis by 7am.

Surely there must be a more efficient way of doing all this which not only make the matter less stressful for the patient but also make better use of the nurses/doctors time and I guess less stressful for the nurses as well as I’m sure it’s not just me who constantly hound the nurses with the same question every 20 minutes or so “When can I go home Please”???

PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE!!!! Don’t get me wrong I don’t wish to make what may look like a huge issue out of this but just put a thought in peoples mind as to whether people may have some ideas. If you do answers on a postcard please to: think tank, blogdom, roath park lake island, splogeland.

Well well well!!! The ever cool hand dude Karen…..drum roll please: Aimed……..Fired……..And……….Missed. Then, Aimed…….Fired……and……Bloody Missed Again so she had a rest and a few deep breaths and changed tactics and lined up for a shot at the other arm. So, sweat pouring from her brow she eyed up the target in her sights. The look of determination in her eyes and refusal to admit defeat she started her run up. You could see that she was going over and over in her mind all the previous times that she succeeded in successfully hitting the right spot and this was not going to beat her. I was sat cross legged, fingers and toes crossed and anything else possible, praying that she would be third time lucky. As she got nearer the mark you could just make out the smallest of twitches of nervousness and also the determination in her actions till finally she took aim and fired with all her might then…………………………………it was as if the whole world had suddenly gone into slow motion and time was standing still……………………every now and then I could feel a little pressure as if just maybe it had come to land in the right spot…………………dare I ask???.................................OH NO !!!!!!!!!!! My Blinking veins have managed to elude the attention of the World Champion. Poor Karen was distraught with herself, you could see that she was not going to accept defeat likely no matter how much I tried to comfort her and tell her that the way to look at it is she couldn’t do no one else would be able too as she is the Undefeated World Champion. She really was up against a huge challenge this time as my veins have had a real battering these last few weeks and need a while to recover. So an appointment has been made for me to have one put in in 10 days or so when they have had a chance to recover a bit.

Good News Too!!! I’ve finally been given a date to start the PUVA treatment and that’s on the 2^nd may next Tuesday. At Bloody Long Last I Say!!!!! I’ll have to let you all know how the tan comes along okay????

Right my Taxi has arrived to get me out of here in the shape and form of Judith I will look forward to speaking to you all on the outside so to speak.

See Ya!!!