Glad it worked out. The only logical conclusion is they were willing to let you die to follow the rules. Welcome to The Machine. Pray for the uninformed.
Anyone who had ever had a proper experience with the NHS ever didn't clap. Or did out of fear of the neighbours. I didn't clap - the NHS is an appalling organisation which has no humanity or compassion left in it. It's amazing that so many of the people who work in it think it is dreadful but they all go along with the cruelty it requires them to inflict on the vulnerable, weak and suffering. I hate it. Absolutely hate it. You were amazingly lucky - imagine if you had been an old man with multiple ailments, hearing problems, diabetes, failing kidneys and you'd discovered your melanoma during lockdowns. You would have been told already that covid was killing everyone and it was a terrible death (you would have seen the BBC scare-mongering TV programme from inside an ICU). You would have been dependent on a suddenly absent care package. You would have been isolated from your family (who, according to everyone, would probably kill you if they breathed near you). You wouldn't have understood anything
about PCR tests. You undoubtedly would have died before they even got you to surgery. Then you would have been another tragic covid death, with a funeral your wife was too scared to go to. Then, months later, after your wife had died from loneliness and toxic jabs, your family would have wondered what went wrong and whether they should carry on blaming people who didn't clap for the NHS.
Martin, you are a legend. How you didn't attack someone through that ordeal is amazing. You should be given a knighthood and be like Sir Professor Whitty.
Seriously though I wonder what the repercussions are for delayed cancer treatments? Some people may have presented with cancers in later stage and then had the ridiculous delay added on top of that. I guess we will see the effect of that in years to come.
Glad you got through the ordeal with sense of humour in tact.
Martin, I am a fellow red headed Hibernian Viking by descent, but I now live in the US.
In 2017 I was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma on my face next to my nose.
A week after the biopsy I underwent a Moh's procedure. The dermatologist remarked to me "Let's get that sucker out of there", and so he did with great enthusiasm leaving a gaping red wound that he then cauterized. Immediately afterwards. A Pakistani plastic surgeon the immediately sewed up the wound using a staple gun. I think it cost around $5,000 and was extremely painful for about three months thereafter, but the wound gradually healed and I have no visible scar.
Last year I detected a now easily recognizable basal cell carcinoma on the other side of my face. Instead of surgery I opted to treat the site with fluorouracil 5% ointment that gradually killed the cancer cells within three weeks. The ointment even detects exactly where the cancer in located, since the skin turns red and then scabs over. I have no scar.
Reading this made me viscerally angry - I admire your courage and determination, and hope it all turned out ok. This is a living nightmare, a life or death scenario being ruled by arbitrary coin-tosses and petty vindictive bureaucrats. I read a story/tweet from a nurse who described being on the phone to a guy in the car park who was not allowed in to see his dying wife. He was begging in tears, and she died alone. The real-life Nurse Ratched told it with the air of "this is just the sacrifice we all have to make" and was almost self-congratulatory. Literally nauseating.
Well done, Martin. I hope everything is OK in the future.
I didn't clap for the NHS. They'd put my 97 year old aunt to death the month before. They'd lost her notes from her very wonderful and meticulous care home with the DNR inside but didn't tell us (as POA) or the care home. They proceeded to 'treat' her which consisted of all manner of procedures that were never going to make any difference but which actually prolonged her suffering before death. The nursing care was beyond abominable and the junior doctor made a huge point of ignoring us. There were no consultants on the ward but a locum consultant was sourced at one point when we complained. He wasn't even from the same hospital never mind another department. They couldn't even get their act together to release her body on time to the university teaching department that she'd filled in the appropriate forms for to donate her body to science.
We did complain but Covid stopped any meaningful progress. The experience was traumatic as onlookers as well as for my aunt. No applause ever for the NHS from us.
Interesting anecdotal observation corroborated by your experience with the various folks working in the NHS: the higher up people, the more medically trained bods seemed to be more ready to admit the BS around covidianism, while the lower echelons of nurses and admin staff behaved like the shock troops of covid hysteria, relishing in their jobsworthiness and newly-found increase in status (like the rise in jumped up Little Hitlers guarding the entrances to public spaces and patrolling the mask/vaccine pass/ six feet distance mandates). When my partner was finally seen by a pulmonary surgeon at the height of the masking regime, the surgeon and his immediate staff were all unmasked, despite close physical examination of people with lord knows what respiratory problems. But to get to that wing of the hospital my partner had to run the gauntlet of all the little NHS rule enforcers, arguing with whom over the finer points of the latest research on mask effectiveness (or PCR reliability, or vaccine effectiveness, or whatever) was a complete waste of time. It had become a matter of faith to trust The Science.
This is a Kafka novel isn't it? In fact no, this is much better than Kafka. Real life imitates surreal art, where literally any reader could have found themselves plunged into the storyline of this novel in place of yourself, though I doubt many would have handled it with such intelligence, wit and restraint as yourself. Not me for sure. I would have flipped.
I found myself going paralysed from the neck down in 2018, but my emergency op was being hampered by the "bed crisis." Fucking beds?! Whereby underfunding pushed low vitamin D season into the surgery wards. Quick chat with a no win no fee lawyer, letter to the CEO of Exeter Hosp telling him of the litigious shit I was about to rain down on his head. Surgeon gave me a bell the day after, he said if I was his wife he would have done the same. Had my op two days later, I guilty vacated bed after 12 hours, well I also needed a cigarette... Here, they are wicked, and usually represent my suspects (UK only)... https://www.clarkewillmott.com/
All too familiar sadly. From an impacted wisdom tooth and infection, I also was chasing round the system private and NHS at the end of 2020. Delays, bureaucracy, tests, masks, inable to get treatment. Lockjaw, causing oral cancer, surgery after being threatened to be kicked out of hospital, treatment refused when skin graft went septic. Looking back even more clown like and crazy than it was at the time if possible. My maxillio facial surgeon also wasn't buying it but had to comply with green and red wards. Could fill an article too with the horrors but we are for sure the forgotten victims
I'm sure your experience has left you better armed to deal with bureaucracy . Short tale. In 2006 I tore my calf muscle. Went undiagnosed for seven weeks in which time it healed itself, but I was left with a clot from my calf to my groin. After that, chronic venous insufficiency means I have to wear a surgical stocking every hour I'm out of bed. Total fuck-up by the NHS. Thank God we've got the internet. I've just been pestered about getting MY flu jab and my shit test as I'm now 60. You'll have to physically carry me into either a doctor's surgery or hospital for me to ever set foot in them again. Pity they couldn't have spent that money seventeen years ago on a leaflet explaining what DVTs are and how to prevent them following injury. The NHS is chock full of lazy fuckers.....the problem is, most people are too scared of invoking bad Karma to call them out on it.
That was a horrific situation saved by your ability to think quickly on your feet, I cannot help but imagine someone more vulnerable who is less mentally agile and what their outcome would be. I wonder how many people we do not hear of have been lost in this unfeeling machine and left to their fate?
Glad it worked out. The only logical conclusion is they were willing to let you die to follow the rules. Welcome to The Machine. Pray for the uninformed.
Anyone who had ever had a proper experience with the NHS ever didn't clap. Or did out of fear of the neighbours. I didn't clap - the NHS is an appalling organisation which has no humanity or compassion left in it. It's amazing that so many of the people who work in it think it is dreadful but they all go along with the cruelty it requires them to inflict on the vulnerable, weak and suffering. I hate it. Absolutely hate it. You were amazingly lucky - imagine if you had been an old man with multiple ailments, hearing problems, diabetes, failing kidneys and you'd discovered your melanoma during lockdowns. You would have been told already that covid was killing everyone and it was a terrible death (you would have seen the BBC scare-mongering TV programme from inside an ICU). You would have been dependent on a suddenly absent care package. You would have been isolated from your family (who, according to everyone, would probably kill you if they breathed near you). You wouldn't have understood anything
about PCR tests. You undoubtedly would have died before they even got you to surgery. Then you would have been another tragic covid death, with a funeral your wife was too scared to go to. Then, months later, after your wife had died from loneliness and toxic jabs, your family would have wondered what went wrong and whether they should carry on blaming people who didn't clap for the NHS.
Damn. Not going into details, but I think I'd have been in prison after about 1/10 of that abuse. You are one cool-headed dude.
Martin, you are a legend. How you didn't attack someone through that ordeal is amazing. You should be given a knighthood and be like Sir Professor Whitty.
Seriously though I wonder what the repercussions are for delayed cancer treatments? Some people may have presented with cancers in later stage and then had the ridiculous delay added on top of that. I guess we will see the effect of that in years to come.
Glad you got through the ordeal with sense of humour in tact.
Martin, I am a fellow red headed Hibernian Viking by descent, but I now live in the US.
In 2017 I was diagnosed with a basal cell carcinoma on my face next to my nose.
A week after the biopsy I underwent a Moh's procedure. The dermatologist remarked to me "Let's get that sucker out of there", and so he did with great enthusiasm leaving a gaping red wound that he then cauterized. Immediately afterwards. A Pakistani plastic surgeon the immediately sewed up the wound using a staple gun. I think it cost around $5,000 and was extremely painful for about three months thereafter, but the wound gradually healed and I have no visible scar.
Last year I detected a now easily recognizable basal cell carcinoma on the other side of my face. Instead of surgery I opted to treat the site with fluorouracil 5% ointment that gradually killed the cancer cells within three weeks. The ointment even detects exactly where the cancer in located, since the skin turns red and then scabs over. I have no scar.
Reading this made me viscerally angry - I admire your courage and determination, and hope it all turned out ok. This is a living nightmare, a life or death scenario being ruled by arbitrary coin-tosses and petty vindictive bureaucrats. I read a story/tweet from a nurse who described being on the phone to a guy in the car park who was not allowed in to see his dying wife. He was begging in tears, and she died alone. The real-life Nurse Ratched told it with the air of "this is just the sacrifice we all have to make" and was almost self-congratulatory. Literally nauseating.
Change the location & that is almost an episode out of Fawlty Towers.
It reminds me of the Soviet Union before it collapsed.
Although at least in the USSR you could bribe somebody with a bottle of vodka.
Kudos for the way you managed to get medical treatment out of the NHS.
"It's only because of their stupidity that they're able to be so sure of themselves".
Franz Kafka
Well done, Martin. I hope everything is OK in the future.
I didn't clap for the NHS. They'd put my 97 year old aunt to death the month before. They'd lost her notes from her very wonderful and meticulous care home with the DNR inside but didn't tell us (as POA) or the care home. They proceeded to 'treat' her which consisted of all manner of procedures that were never going to make any difference but which actually prolonged her suffering before death. The nursing care was beyond abominable and the junior doctor made a huge point of ignoring us. There were no consultants on the ward but a locum consultant was sourced at one point when we complained. He wasn't even from the same hospital never mind another department. They couldn't even get their act together to release her body on time to the university teaching department that she'd filled in the appropriate forms for to donate her body to science.
We did complain but Covid stopped any meaningful progress. The experience was traumatic as onlookers as well as for my aunt. No applause ever for the NHS from us.
Interesting anecdotal observation corroborated by your experience with the various folks working in the NHS: the higher up people, the more medically trained bods seemed to be more ready to admit the BS around covidianism, while the lower echelons of nurses and admin staff behaved like the shock troops of covid hysteria, relishing in their jobsworthiness and newly-found increase in status (like the rise in jumped up Little Hitlers guarding the entrances to public spaces and patrolling the mask/vaccine pass/ six feet distance mandates). When my partner was finally seen by a pulmonary surgeon at the height of the masking regime, the surgeon and his immediate staff were all unmasked, despite close physical examination of people with lord knows what respiratory problems. But to get to that wing of the hospital my partner had to run the gauntlet of all the little NHS rule enforcers, arguing with whom over the finer points of the latest research on mask effectiveness (or PCR reliability, or vaccine effectiveness, or whatever) was a complete waste of time. It had become a matter of faith to trust The Science.
This is a Kafka novel isn't it? In fact no, this is much better than Kafka. Real life imitates surreal art, where literally any reader could have found themselves plunged into the storyline of this novel in place of yourself, though I doubt many would have handled it with such intelligence, wit and restraint as yourself. Not me for sure. I would have flipped.
I found myself going paralysed from the neck down in 2018, but my emergency op was being hampered by the "bed crisis." Fucking beds?! Whereby underfunding pushed low vitamin D season into the surgery wards. Quick chat with a no win no fee lawyer, letter to the CEO of Exeter Hosp telling him of the litigious shit I was about to rain down on his head. Surgeon gave me a bell the day after, he said if I was his wife he would have done the same. Had my op two days later, I guilty vacated bed after 12 hours, well I also needed a cigarette... Here, they are wicked, and usually represent my suspects (UK only)... https://www.clarkewillmott.com/
All too familiar sadly. From an impacted wisdom tooth and infection, I also was chasing round the system private and NHS at the end of 2020. Delays, bureaucracy, tests, masks, inable to get treatment. Lockjaw, causing oral cancer, surgery after being threatened to be kicked out of hospital, treatment refused when skin graft went septic. Looking back even more clown like and crazy than it was at the time if possible. My maxillio facial surgeon also wasn't buying it but had to comply with green and red wards. Could fill an article too with the horrors but we are for sure the forgotten victims
I'm sure your experience has left you better armed to deal with bureaucracy . Short tale. In 2006 I tore my calf muscle. Went undiagnosed for seven weeks in which time it healed itself, but I was left with a clot from my calf to my groin. After that, chronic venous insufficiency means I have to wear a surgical stocking every hour I'm out of bed. Total fuck-up by the NHS. Thank God we've got the internet. I've just been pestered about getting MY flu jab and my shit test as I'm now 60. You'll have to physically carry me into either a doctor's surgery or hospital for me to ever set foot in them again. Pity they couldn't have spent that money seventeen years ago on a leaflet explaining what DVTs are and how to prevent them following injury. The NHS is chock full of lazy fuckers.....the problem is, most people are too scared of invoking bad Karma to call them out on it.
That was a horrific situation saved by your ability to think quickly on your feet, I cannot help but imagine someone more vulnerable who is less mentally agile and what their outcome would be. I wonder how many people we do not hear of have been lost in this unfeeling machine and left to their fate?