Chris Dalton's Personal Development Blog

Kidney stones are the closest any man will get to experiencing the pains of bearing a child.

I have as my authority on this a female member of Oxford’s JR Hospital A & E nursing staff, so it’s not just male exaggeration.

This blog post, like the wretched stone that decided to descend in mid November, has been sitting dormant for quite a while and I am publishing it now only because:

1. the memory of writhing around in agony on the floor in the waiting area, writhing around a lot more in the treatment bay in the Accident and Emergency before and after triage and then (mercifully quickly) receiving treatment and palliative medicine – all that has by now faded to a rather pleasant sepia mental image, and yet

2. the polite and professional conduct of the staff at the hospital, and all the processes (reception, handovers, trolley rides, scans, blood tests, examinations, cups of tea and biscuits)  that dealt quickly (though the morphine helped with any sense of time passing) with diagnosis and treatment  – the fact of all this just needs to be broadcast in praise of the people at the sharp end of our health care system.

I’ve never broken a bone, never stayed a night in hospital, never really had a life-threatening illness, but I’m very glad that if any of those things happened we have an organisation, and complex and imperfect it might be, that will without question act immediately to treat me, and treat me no differently to anyone else earning more or less than I do.  So, I think Danny Boyle was quite in order to make celebration of the NHS a part of the Olympic opening ceremony. For what it’s worth, I have experienced misery of the phoney public health system of Hungary (where staff are hardly paid, and treatment is invariably bought with backhanded, back-pocket payment), and it doesn’t compare.

Mind you, I’ll also be very content never to repeat that particular need to be rushed in the back of a car to the hospital…