alistair
But normal acceptable doesn’t exist. What’s the alternative?

Not being contrary, and definitely not denigrating anything your friends are going through.

I’ve been waiting on routine checkups and am now on the endangered species list. Could have been caught earlier, but could be worse, and medical professionals are busting their fucking nuts.

    But, so are thousands of NHS Doctors and Nurses having to put in fucking shifts to save peoples lives. Oh, and also you’re MIL probably has a greater chance of catching Covid in Hospital so an extra 6 months in pain is worth a lifetime when you could possibly die because she demands her op now.

    Whats your solution then Ali?
    Are you finally happy to go all in & admit the Tories have fucked it all up and a bunch of cunts?!

    If you go into hospital your chances of contacting COVID significantly increase. If you have an operation you are in for at least a few days. Generally you would be having an operation to deal with a relatively serious health condition - even if not, if you have other underlying conditions this vastly increases your risk of death from COVID.

    Along_the_Wire don’t think so but you never know. She lives three hours away and we have not seen her since March which is troubling for my wife. They did check for cancer at the start which came back negative and gave her pain killers which don’t work. Living in acute pancreatic, abdominal pain which is getting worse and struggling to sleep. Still waiting for a hospital appointment. Just venting my frustrations.

        alistair Feel for you man and its an understandable frustration as you have to manage the emotions of the other half and all the questions revolve around why?

        My other half hasn’t seen her mum in almost two years now and during the earlier days, she was extremely anxious about when she would get back to see her. Especially seeing as she somehow contracted Glandular Fever! The wife is now at the stage where we’ll only go to the US once the numbers start to stabilise and hopefully, the vaccine has bought a decent amount of time in the interim.

          I have to have these conversations quite regularly. Only yesterday we postponed a cancer operation for somebody who needed an ICU bed post-operatively and we could not provide it. Part of the reason there was no bed is because we had been up at 2 am doing another operation on an emergency patient that needed an ICU bed.

          There is a huge backlog of patients. Some of them quite poorly. ICU staff are knackered. People who normally work in theatres such as scrub nurses and anaesthetic nurses and anaesthetists have all been working in ICU (ours has doubled in size and the ‘cold’ ICU is actually situated in a theatre recovery area).

          When this starts to get better you can;t ask all the people who have been putting in a massive shift on ICU to suddenly start back in theatres at full gas to deal with the backlog.

          You can’t use the private sector for a lot of the cases becuase they are too sick. We do hip and knee replacements on some quite ill patients now and most of the private sector does not have good out of hours cover or any critical care facilities.

          I am working nights and long days, backfilling the junior doctors from the anaesthetic rota that are on ICU.

          The staff are generally knackered. It’s not that they do not want to do the other work, but there is just too much of it and not the support or physical space to do it.

            Sounds like the only answer to to dismantle and flog the NHS and get a private/proper company in to get it all guns blazing.

            Once a tranz, always a tranz

            benson
            Thanks for explaining the why Benson.

            It’s not about what’s acceptable but what’s possible in the circumstances.

            I had a bit of a chat with my GP yesterday, basically thanking him and the team for supporting ’routine checks etc and he was expressing frustration that they wish they could do more. And he acknowledged that he’s not even at the sharp end like you.