Low Life

Jeremy Clarke

Wednesday, 10th June 2009

Unkindness to strangers

There’s an obscure corner of me that relishes pain and physical injury. It doesn’t want permanent pain. But an occasional sharp reminder of the reality of pain exhilarates it. So when I foolishly unscrewed the cap on my car radiator and a fountain of boiling water erupted, scalding the underside of my forearm, this masochistic side of me was quite chuffed.

The rest of me was immmediately concerned with refilling the radiator and reservoir. From the midden in the rear footwells I dug out two empty plastic water bottles and carried them up the drive of the nearest house and rang the bell beside the front door. It was a well-to-do sort of a road: a strip of grass separated the pavement from the road. The house was detached mock Tudor with roof gables.

After a second ring I heard shuffling in the hall. Then the door opened about four inches — the extent allowed by a brass chain — and the face of an elderly woman pressed into the gap. ‘What is it?’ she hissed. ‘My radiator has overheated and I’d like some water, please,’ I said. I showed the empty plastic bottles. A wrinkled hand appeared and the fingers beckoned impatiently, vulgarly at them. I felt like Hansel negotiating with the witch at the door of her gingerbread house. I passed in the bottles and they quickly reappeared, now partially filled with water. My expression of gratitude was cut short by the door slamming.

The skin on my arm was now either coming away from the flesh or blistering. The blisters were filling with fluid. I tipped the water from the bottles into the radiator, shut the bonnet and considered whether I ought to have the arm looked at by a medical person.

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Tomas

June 11th, 2009 2:04pm Report this comment

I do so hope you send the doctor and receptionist a copy to reflect on.

Thank you for the painful laugh.

Mrs. Carole Reiss

June 12th, 2009 11:19am Report this comment

Jeremy,
this will be no consolation for you but just know that this type of reaction by doctors is not uniquely in UK. In GVA it is quite the same: I broke (in thouthad pieces because of osteoporosis) my shoulder and arm. The local hospital being overbooked by drunk thugs having fought I could not have any surgery before 10 days and they wanted to knock me out with morphine for ten days in the infected emergency unit (in the corridor). The pain was so excruciating that, finally I decided to go to a private clinic where the surgeon operated immediately (steel shoulder and arm now) and, as I am not ccovered in private clinics, invoiced the basic costs to the insurance who don't want to pay it because I SHOULD have been in agony and operated in 10 days with a probable amputation with an infection and being handicapped for life had I not decided to go in a clinic where an operating room was vacant. Here insurances prefer to pay 2 months hospiralization in a 12 people dormitory, mingling, infectious patients with others rather than pay 2 days in a clinic at the lowest price! The world has gone really mad! I find myself now with a CHF 15'000.- bill to pay for the next 5 years: they would have prefered one to be seriously hadicaped for life and pay 40'000 for a two months stay in communal room for a reason of "principle"!

Solidarity is a word unknown here.

Bridget

June 14th, 2009 4:35pm Report this comment

Doesn't surprise me I'm afraid. When an old man fell over in his front garden and could not get up again, just across the road from my local surgery, no doctor or nurse would walk across the road to help him. I had to call an ambulance and wait with him until the medics came. I couldn't lift him as I was 8 months pregnant and he was surprisingly heavy. The only people who stopped to help us were two 8 year old boys on their bikes!

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