‘If you are calling about sinusitis, sore throat, earache in children, infected inset bite from the UK not overseas, impetigo, shingles, or female-only uncomplicated water infections, speak to your local pharmacist.’
That is how my parents’ GP surgery now answers the phone. A recorded message telling you to go away for almost every illness you might have is read out by a very stern male voice, unnecessarily loudly. He first tells you to dial 999 for life-threatening emergencies, or 111 for anything less serious, leaving you to decide which is which.
Then he tells you there are no appointments even if you wait for an answer because so many of the doctors themselves are off sick. Then he starts reeling off a list of things that are ‘common conditions’ that you must wander about the high street with.
Imagine if you came back from holiday and your leg was oozing pus… British mosquito or foreign one?
I particularly like the detail about UK-only infected bites. Imagine if you came back from holiday and the next day your leg was swollen and oozing pus. How would you decide whether it was a British mosquito or a foreign one?
The ‘uncomplicated’ bit is a nice touch with the water infections, because again, you have to be a doctor to decide what’s complicated.
And what if you haven’t decided you’re female? Nowadays, we can’t just assume.
I remember when any water infection was a cause for concern, no matter what its gender. Hell, I remember when any infected insect bite was something you’d take to a doctor, irrespective of the insect’s nationality.
As for shingles, I remember when shingles was something so worrying that if you heard of someone who had it you would tell someone else: ‘So-and-so’s got shingles!’ It was an event. They had to be shockingly run down, or else one of those rare types who never had chicken pox as a child. It was incredible when someone got shingles.
But shingles is one in three now. I also remember when impetigo was a bit worrying, along with your child having earache, or a sore throat. You’d take the child to the doctors in case it was an indication of something.
But these things are normal now, thank goodness. I do feel so much better now the doctors are telling us it’s nothing to worry about. Don’t you?
No, neither do I. I’m being sarcastic. I’m baffled by the attempt to present almost everything including the utterly horrifying as either entirely to be expected, or the result of some bizarre twist of fate.
So many medical conditions are being presented, and largely accepted, as normal via very convoluted explanations. But really, it is all so simple.
Do you remember when tragedies were not being presented as normal via very convoluted explanations?
And do you remember when someone saying ‘Hang on a minute, something’s up’ was seen as a whistleblower, not a mad conspiracy theorist or ‘anti-vaxxer’ requiring, according to Keir Starmer on 5 January 2021, on Good Morning Britain, ‘emergency legislation’ to shut them up?
I do. I remember those days. And when was this halcyon time? Only a few years ago, really.
Since then we’ve seen public health, against the backdrop of an already ludicrously overloaded system, decline to the stage where a GP’s answer message is pretty much: ‘For life-threatening emergencies run up and down the street screaming because there might be a doctor somewhere. For everything else see if you can buy something from the chemist. For all other inquiries email noonethere@nhs.uk.’
I sent an email about my parents’ worsening conditions, and that bounced back with a message saying the surgery had changed their email.
I sent another to the latest one as described, then I decided to hang on the phone for half an hour to check.
And when someone answered she admitted that no, the new address they had given on the automated response wasn’t correct. She gave me another one, which sounded equally unlikely.
I sent the email anyway, and it must have sounded like a cry for help because the next day a doctor called me and agreed that this situation cannot continue.
I am not a specialist carer or nurse and I do not know what to do about the day-to-day onslaught of worsening conditions that my parents have endured for the past three years.
It is all very well to discharge my father home for me to look after, even though I don’t live with him, after he has had a heart attack from a blood clot that has had to be operated on. And it is all very well to tell me that while I am at it, I can also look after my mother who has dementia and can’t walk from the bleeds in her knee joints, one of which has had to be replaced, at her own cost, and who also has a tumour in her neck.
And it is all very well to be told by the system that above all, I must not question any of it, nor any of the other situations I see happening to others around me, either.
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