Professional Ignorer

I know there is no such word as ignorer but bear with me.

When I was doing my A levels I wanted to be a doctor.  I liked science and puzzle solving. I was interested in people and somehow it made sense but I was far too lazy and a bit squeamish, so it never happened.  I've visited people in hospital more often than I would like recently and I have never been so grateful for my laziness.

Everything moves so slowly in hospital: a doctor can order a test on Wednesday and it still hasn't happened by Sunday.  Patients are annoying and their relatives are worse. Hospitals are huge, easy to get lost in and full of sick people. There's never any space in the car park and parking costs a fortune.  Joking is banned in hospital, even though they are weirdly funny places. And the food....the food is.....indescribable.

If you work in hospital the only cure for all of this annoyance is to block it all out.  You can stand in the middle of a ward, loudly discussing a patient and his left-sided paralysis without even noticing that he has fallen further onto his left side, almost out of bed.  The sound of bleeping machines and their blaring alarms fall on deaf ears.  When patients press their call buttons you keep your focus on your screen: chances are they are only going to ask for something that you don't have, like a pillow, or a chair for their visitors to sit on.

I'm not sure I could have been a professional ignorer.

I can see why you would have to, though, to survive.  When you have heard a story twenty one times, you do begin to switch off.
"Yeah, mate, it was all very sudden.  You know me, I never take a single pill and now I've got hundreds to take every day......I think they're putting bromide in my tea too, cause I can't get it up."

I had to keep listening because I wanted one of his phone-a-friends to ask him why he needed to 'get it up' on an Emergency Assessment Ward.  If that was a standard test I became even more grateful I had given up any idea of being a doctor.

I would snub lots of relatives too.  Probably not the ones they look right through.  I would talk to the smiling ones who make jokes and ask politely for a chair but I would tell those who insist on a nurse sitting with them and feeding their relative (who is perfectly capable of doing it himself) to .... (Alright,I'd probably be sacked).  I would tell the relatives that insist that the nurse showers and feed their relative before they'll take him home that they and people like them are solely responsible for the collapse of the NHS and physically escort them down the long corridor to wander aimlessly until they work out where the exit is.

I also have some sympathy for the eye-rolling medics whose patients haven't understood a word they've said.  As a musician, I also speak a different language to the general population.  I can sympathise with both the medic and the man standing outside the toilet being berated, "You need to do the sample again there was no volume on it.  We need to know how much you voided."  When you've asked a pupil to play a passage 'piano' eleven times you sometimes forget that they might have forgotten that it means quietly and are not annoying you on purpose.  Patients ask their doctors to tell them the same thing over and over again because they haven't understood. I hope that's not the reason doctors ask patients to repeat the story too.

The current crop of professional ignorers that I've been watching are extremely skilled.  They can talk to relatives without looking up from a screen, find out everything they need to know about a patient from an i-pad and I am so glad they have the job and not me.

Hospital Symphony

Visiting someone in hospital can be tricky.

Some people love it. I met a woman this weekend who makes a hobby of hospital visits. She sits with people who have cancer and, "makes sure they've filled all their forms in properly." I admired her dedication and sacrifice of her precious days off (she was a DCI by day) but her brusque efficiency made me secretly hope never to need her services. 

I prefer to avoid hospitals, as they are full of sick and tired people (and that's just the staff) but when someone you love is there you have a duty to visit. 

Some families sit by the bed for the full 8 hour visiting session, barely talking, watching the machines go 'beep', fluffing pillows and undertaking any nursing duties that the staff are too stretched or tired to do. Others keep their visits short and sweet, exchanging information about each other's life since the last visit and leaving with a breezy, "cheerio," and a peck on the cheek. Some families bring small children to fold their grandparents up inside the bed by accidentally pressing a few buttons and asking questions about death with saucer-wide eyes. The dementia patients families explain to their loved ones with increasing volume that they are in, "hospital. Yes, hospital. HOSPITAL! H  O S , oh never mind." These are extremely useful visitors, as the staff generally prefer to ignore the rantings of the senile. Some families arrive with sweets and fruit and leave before they have eaten all of it. These families are particularly useful, as hospital food is still mostly inedible.

I'm the type of visitor that engages in salt smuggling to a cardiac ward, sits watching the people and listens to the noises. Hospitals wouldn't be my first choice of place for creative stimulus but they are, nevertheless, a rich source of inspiration. They are full of humour, which I find useful to share with the person I am visiting. 

I listened to the man with the rare blood disorder tell the nurse that he caught it when he was in the Boer war and heard her ask him if he got any medals.

 The man in the next door bed who shouted, "There's an ambulance!" every time one went passed the window before his daughter replied, "Yes Dad, you're in hospital," was tragically funny. If I'm ever in hospital I hope the staff aren't too busy to come and deal with the redundant , unconscious woman that is in my hospital bed. He tried talking to her himself but she just wasn't shifting. I dread to think what kind of night he will have if he has to share his bed with her. I couldn't see her at first but by the end of my visit I was as certain of her presence as he was. 

The food arrived. Patients cleared their trays of sweets, crisps and fruit and apologised to the girl bringing them their dinner. 

"I'm sorry. It's just that when you have visitors they bring you sweets and things."

"What's wrong with that?" The girl puzzled.

"Well it means that I probably won't eat my dinner."

The girl raised an eyebrow and a small smile began to twitch at the corner of her mouth. She surveyed the pushed away treats,"It's all good stuff though."

"Are you saying this dinner isn't?"

She chuckled, thinking that she would rather chew her own arm off than be forced to eat it herself. 

The man opposite pushed his food around his plate a bit and the nurse who  came to give him his drugs and stick a thermometer in his ear (which she does without a word of warning) asked him why he wasn't eating his dinner. He complained of feeling sick and the nurse told him that he needs white toast and jam, "That's what my mum always gave me when I was sick. The plainness of the toast and the stickiness of the jam helps to keep it all in," she says cheerfully. In the absence of jam to stick the potential vomit in place she brings him a bowl.  He begs for her to remove his plate of food but as that is not her job she continues rambling on about ginger and bananas." She is nice. I liked her. We gave him a banana.

We played a game of 'best word to describe the food'. 

"Un-eatable."

"Unpalatable."

"Rancid."

"Revolting, nauseating, abhorrent."

"Distasteful, stomach-churning, vile.

"Indelible, indigestible, inedible."

"Crap?"

The nurse returned to the man with the banana, "You still feeling crap?" she asked him before moving his tray of food to the bedside cabinet.

"See? crap! It's a technical term for the food."

I hadn't noticed the man's prosthetic leg until the nurse accidentally kicked it. 

"I noticed it straight away when I came in. It was propped up against the end of the bed," said my Dad, really beginning to enjoy the humour of a hospital. 

Things started to get quiet. The man with the leg had eaten his banana and fallen asleep in the chair, the man in the next bed's visitors had left and he was quietly chuntering away to the invisible unconscious woman in his bed. The man with the blood disorder had been plugged into his heating bag, temperature set to 40 degrees and drifted off to, what I can only imagine, were tropical dreams. We had caught up on all the news and so we sat and listened to the noises of the ward. 

The not so gentle hum of the heating bag, the slide of shoes across the floor, the different beeps of the various machines and the echo of those beeps, as bored patients incorrectly sing back the tune.

"It was bothering me all night. Are they triplets?"

"No, I think it's semi quavers followed by a rest."

"He sang three."

"I know but he was wrong. There are four."

"You should hear the plasma drip. That has a brilliant tune."

"What note is it?"

"I guess an Eb."

"I think it's a F."

We checked. You never know when you might need the digital tuner on your phone. 

"It's a B. A slightly flat B. Not a Bb but just a tiny bit out of tune."

"Well, who'd have thought it. I thought it was much lower than that."

Two machines begin to beep and there is a harmonic buzz between them. We wonder if you would experience the Doppler effect if you walked between them. 

"There's a symphony in here," we agreed and I left with a notebook of ideas promising not to write it first. Everyone needs a project for when they leave hospital, even if the days of 40 mile walks and mountain climbing are over.

Rottweilers, waiting and sleep

We're nearly there and I think we're going to make it. It was touch and go for a while; lack of sleep, worries about concerts, family, crappy health, and university decisions all made Christmas seem like a far distant improbability but suddenly I woke up this morning (3am) and felt hopeful. Christmas isn't cancelled.

Yesterday's church service practice was perfectly fine. I parked my car at the vicarage to unload all the stands, chime bars, music and costumes (oh yes, even a simple church service is a major production at our school). The vicar was putting out his recycling boxes.

"Goodness, you have got a lot of stuff. Hold on a minute and I'll take you in the tradesman's entrance."

I didn't laugh. Professional as always.

I ended up playing the piano for more than I had expected to, as a colleague who I had bullied into it was suddenly sick. Making music can be a stressful business and many of the pupils had anxieties that needed to be calmed. Many of them won't have slept well tonight. I'd like to tell them that sleep has been in short supply in my life since the beginning of December but I don't think it would help. I'm sure that I've told you that I absolutely hate playing the piano in public. 

I'm paranoid about it too. The church piano has to be thumped to get any kind of sound out of it and a wrong note leaps out and makes me wince. During one of the hymns, I looked up and saw a teacher laughing hysterically. I KNEW IT. Everyone was laughing at me. I should give up. Everyone knows that I play like Les Dawson. I am a figure of fun, so unless I can grow a few extra fingers it is time to admit defeat and stop playing. Let someone else have a go.

But despite my paranoia and stupidly lacking fingers we got through it. And no one had to shout at year 5/6.

The rest of my day was spent with my parents, travelling to the Royal Free Hospital for an appointment. I was there to translate for my mum, who has terrible trouble with anything other than a Dagenham accent and to stop my Dad running up stairs.  I'm not a fan of hospitals. I know some people like them but to me they are big, scary, grubby places full of grumpy people who have forgotten how to laugh.

Doctors are so stressed they order coffee and forget to pick it up at the coffee shop, nurses all look tired and harassed and receptionists have turned into rabid dogs. I had a lot of time to observe a Rottweiler at work, as when we arrived there was a note on the board that said there was a 45 minute delay. We settled down in the tropical heat and discussed whether it would be appropriate to strip down to our vests.

 Rottweiler Number One was on duty. She sat at the desk wearing a tight bodycon mini skirt, trainers and a big thick fluffy pink jumper. She had a small fan on her desk, which she occasionally directed into her face. She took people's forms without looking at them, or speaking to them (if they were lucky). On the right of her computer were a large pile of chocolates and on the left an enormous and ever growing pile of wrappers. 

"I have an appointment on the 22nd that I can't make," said an old Gentleman in a very marked way. He was trying to make himself understood, the way you do in a foreign country. "The 22nd. I. Can't.do."

She waved his forms in the air and said nothing.

"I. Need. To. Change. My. Appointment."
Rottweiler One popped a chocolate in her mouth.
"Can't. Make. 22nd."
"Are you de eye patient?"
"I. Need. To. Change. It."
"But are you here for eye clinic?"
"It's. That. I. Need. A. New. Appointment."
"Eye Clinic."
"Appointment"
She examined his forms again and waved them at him.
"Eyes next door.  Clinic 3."
The old man stood, looking bemused.  Another patient in the queue explained it to him.

We wondered how hard it would have been to say, "I'm sorry this is the wrong clinic.  You need the one next door."

Later, after the fifth patient had been through this routine I did have some sympathy for her but you can't expect patients who have problems with their eyes to be able to distinguish between a 2 and a 3 on a letter or a sign and I'm sure they'd rather deal with Miss Rottie than accidentally have major surgery on something that was working well.

Also, in her defense, she was equally rude to everyone.  The doctors, the nurses, the other hospital staff.  When anyone used the phone on the desk she made a great show of getting out the antibacterial wipes and thoroughly cleaning it.  Colleagues approached her with eye-rolling trepidation. A woman with a hospital badge and a woolly hat, quietly asked her for something to which the answer was, "Nurses."
The lady in the hat snuck up and down the corridor knocking on doors and tutting. When it finally became obvious that she wasn't going to find what she wanted she went back to the desk. 

"Err. I'm sorry. I can't seem to find. I don't know who to. I err. Which nurse did you say?"

Rottie waved her hand dismissively without looking.

"Yes. Nurses. One of them." Then she stared straight at the quaking bobble hat, who rushed off, as if she had been scolded. 

We had now been waiting for an hour and so a nurse came out and changed the sign on the board. The waiting time was now an hour. That was good to know.

She thought she had been waiting a long time.

Rot One had a visit from someone she liked and briefly seemed happy. They discussed going out and what they were going to wear. Patients, telephones, doctors and nurses had to wait while they had their conversation but she did stand up and do a little shimmy, which cheered us all up.

It was now an hour and a half from the appointment time and we considered asking someone, to make sure we hadn't missed being called. It happened to me once, waiting for a blood test I was so engrossed in a conversation between two old ladies that I missed the number being changed.

"Not her, though," my mum insisted.

Spoilsport.

A jolly nurse tried to explain, "You be a very portant patient for the prof. He want to see you 'eesell. Ha ha. De prof fink ye very portan." I translated and we only had to wait another half hour. 

Waiting two hours for a  15 minute consultation seems ridiculous, even to someone like me,  who is quite good at waiting and enjoyed the opportunity to sit down for a while. However, the fact that I woke up this morning feeling full of Christmas cheer makes me hope you all get a long wait before the festivities begin.

Attention Seekers

Hospitals are funny places.  If you sit in A&E at this time of year it is like being in a sitcom.  If there had been any signal on my mobile I would have posted a suggestion on facebook that this afternoon would have been a good time to visit.  No point leaving it until Christmas Eve for the drunken fight that might need stitches - much better to go while it was quiet.

There was only one couple there but the sign announced waiting time to be 1 hour 45 minutes and the receptionist couldn't look up from her computer for 3 minutes.  My mum and I had followed the ambulance that had brought my dad.  He has been a lifelong attention seeker, having had his first heart attack at 42.  Despite this, he probably does more, with greater enthusiasm than anyone I've ever met. A spot of angina, lasting longer than normal, following running up the path to talk to the postlady and give her a Christmas card needed to be checked out.  The receptionist told us that the computer said he was still in the ambulance bay and we would have to wait 10minutes.  "Will you let us know when?" was answered with a non-committal grunt.  After 20 minutes we thought we should ask again.  This time computer said 'yes'

The same questions were asked by at least 7 different people.  As a Lifelong Attention Seeker he was used to it.  I wanted to shout, "How did you get through 5 years of medical school if you can't read the notes?"
Nurses wandered in to write the numbers from the beepy machine on a chart and stick a thermometer in the ear.  Often they did this without a single word.  Call me old fashioned but I do think it would be polite to at least say hello before you prod something into someone's ear!

I am a little concerned about Christmas this year because Santa was wheeled in to the next door room and he didn't sound good.

As we left a child called my name.  I'm ashamed to say that I didn't look up because I really didn't want to see a child I teach in the waiting room with a saucepan stuck on their head.  I just hope Santa arrived in an ambulance and not through the waiting room.  I wouldn't want the children who had stuck their heads in saucepans to worry.