IHS 7

The moral of all this is - if you have an hernia wear a truss, or an “appliance” like your old Dad or uncle used to do, when they didn’t expect any surgery.
I got home six days later, thanks to a lift from the ladies of the church again.
At home I could get some darkness, quiet and good food, at least the seedy, nutty rolls and butter provided by a friend.

The feeling of loneliness I’d picked up like an infection on my second visit to hospital lingered and I felt annoyed and frustrated. I made a complaint about the lack of chaplains. They got back to me and said, in modern parlance, “We got it wrong.” They are apparently over-stretched, being cut back, and phased out. I am not sure who pays for them, the NHS or the C of E.
Putting my money where my mouth is, I have decided to do some hospital visiting myself. There is a course to learn how to do it starting in the Spring at Hammersmith. Hospitals are so bleak now that this is obviously a badly needed service. I am not sure the doctors at Victor Bonney will be pleased to see me turning up again, and it might be a problem that I only speak English and hardly anyone else does, but I will give it a try.

I also made a complaint about that strange man who frayed my nerves when I spent those hours lying on a bed in A & E.
At first I was told, “More training is possibly needed.” You can say that again. But what I’d like to know is HOW someone like that got the job in the first place? Is the NHS using some agency to recruit people from abroad on the cheap – like Tesco’s and Morrison’s?
Later I heard he had been ticked off for speaking to the wheel-chair pusher in a foreign language in front of me. Apparently that is “unacceptable.” But as the NHS at least in London, is chiefly an employer of foreign workers, how can they expect anything else?