LOCAL HEALTH SERVICE: AND ME WITH A SORE TOE TOO

NOTEBOOK by BILL HEANEY

Has the NHS lost the plot around here? I ask because of my experience of dealing with them in the past few weeks. Now, I know that a sore toe sounds like a joke when you don’t have one yourself, but believe you me it can be excruciating. 

Sir Billy Connolly injected some humour into the subject when he wrote a song which included the words “an’ me wi’ a sore leg too”.

Having sliced through my big toe while making an effort to cut my nails, I thought I had better get something done about it – and quickly too.

So, in order to take the pressure off our GP at Dumbarton Health Centre, I hirpled into the Minor Injuries Unit at Vale of Leven Hospital to delightedly discover there was just one single person in the queue.

The nurse who dealt with me was terrific. She sorted me out in jig time, dressed the wound and made me comfortable and even put some special bandaging on the injured digit.

Then she told me I would probably have to see a podiatrist to finish off the job. I could do that by getting in touch with my GP practice, who would fix that for me.

The receptionist in Artizan however said I couldn’t make an appointment through her. I would have to call a special number she gave me and they would make the appointment for me.

However, nothing is simple in this world. Not when you are dealing with the NHS. I called the special number and got through to an answering machine where I left my details but, when they called me back I was driving and so couldn’t answer the phone.

When I tried to ring them back, I discovered the number didn’t take call backs. Wonderful.

So, I limped on, thinking I would just leave the offending digit to heal itself, but it was too painful and I was forced a couple of days later to phone the initial number again.

Not for me, I thought. I’ll e mail them and ask for new instructions. With all the bumph they send out, they appear to consider themselves at the cutting edge of IT.

I called them the next morning and was told to phone the initial “special number” which I did and they said they would give me the number they had initially passed on to me.

But only if I gave them the details that were contained in a letter I had received from my GP.

Of course, I didn’t have a letter from my GP since my initial contact with a medic had been at the Vale Minor Injuries Unit.

The telephonist at the end of the line said I must have a letter. I said I didn’t and explained the situation.

Hold on, she said until I check this. She came back and was still insistent about that letter. I must have it. I didn’t and was cut off trying to explain (politely) things as they actually were.

Back to Dumbarton Health Centre then where I told them about the e mail. The person I spoke with was puzzled. When did I send it, she asked. They didn’t have the e mail at the reception desk. They kept them in the back somewhere.  You can’t be serious, I thought.

I said I was told in their e mail that I would have to see a doctor to “inspect the wound” and, if appropriate, the doctor would refer me on to a podiatrist.

The receptionist said I couldn’t see a doctor but she would refer me to a podiatrist. But she didn’t do that and passed me on to a “doctor” who wasn’t a qualified doctor but was well able to handle my problem.

I turned up for the appointment in Dumbarton with that substitute doctor, who took a look at my now poisoned toe in the now dirty digital dressing and said she would make me an appointment with a podiatrist, which she did.

It was not at the Hospital Minor Injury Unit though but at the Vale Health Centre down the road from it. It seems local people can’t make an appointment to see a practice nurse/podiatrist or whatever at their local health centre.

Whoever approved this state of affairs deserves an OBE – one behind the earhole.

I turned up there and waited where a podiatrist told me to take my shoes and socks off before cleaning the wounded toe and doing what ever it is that podiatrists do to make patients pain free and comfortable.

Lindsay, the podiatrist, did an excellent job. With just a few skilful snips here and there and a new dressing I was without pain and poison within half an hour and felt so good that I was considering taking up football again.

Sadly, the foregoing is what I experienced getting a simple, straightforward procedure done. I hope others in the same boat don’t have a similar experience.

And I hope that the basket case Health and Social Care Partnership, which is tied in with West Dunbartonshire Council, reviews its new and impracticable rules for making an appointment with a nurse or a podiatrist in West Dunbartonshire. Or a doctor even.

All that took me about three weeks. For a sore toe. It’s little wonder the NHS is in the crisis it is in. Or that more and more people are choosing to go private. Or that the spin doctors’ tale that the NHS is worked off its feet in GPs’ Surgeries, Minor Injury Units and even hospitals is all it’s made out to be.

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Now that the sun has come out at last to give us a brief taste of what summer looks like, I notice a petition on social media, which is detested by politicians because it gives the  public direct access to them. I get the feeling they don’t actually want to know what is happening in their own backyard. Well, much of it is just disgraceful.

Dealing with a medical matter much more serious than my sore toe, a public petition – not that West Dunbartonshire Council or the Health and Social Care Partnership ever listens to what the public have to say (please don’t ask me to list the petitions they have ignored – has been raised to ask the NHS to up their game on the sunshine – and sun bed – related issue of skin cancer.

One dismayed woman wrote: “This petition is born out of heartbreak. Two years ago, my auntie had faced the terrifying diagnosis of Grade 1A melanoma. Brave, she fought and overcame it – or so we believed. The cancer was surgically removed from her back, and life was meant to go back to normal. Recently, however, we’ve been devastated to learn that the cancer spread unnoticed.

“The National Health Service (NHS) had not conducted any follow-up checks on her condition post-surgery.”

Melanoma, though regarded as one of the most dangerous forms of skin cancer, can have a high survival rate if caught early. 92% of patients survive for at least ten years if the cancer is detected before it spreads to the lymph nodes (Cancer Research UK). However, an essential part of this success is monitoring and follow-up studies. My auntie, like numerous others, is evidence that no matter the grade of initial diagnosis, the potential for the cancer to return and metastasize is real.

Let’s hope the petition succeeds in this situation being rectified — soon.

Sunbathing on the beach in places such as Barcelona can have serious health consequences.