Your local GP

Today the NHS are split into various teams, none of which seem to communicate too well with each other. The waiting lists for minor operations are extremely long

Prior to being privy to this luxury of bypassing your grouchy doctor, who barely even looks up when you come through the door, let along cares less about you, to get to someone with machines, there is a procedure as there is with most things these days, It involves automated calls to monotone people, who seem just as pissed off as we are at having to offer five numbered options!

Another part of procedure is having to work out what to tell the newly appointed nose ointment behind the desk, that used to be the receptionist, but has now been elevated to, the first person who gets to know what is wrong with you or what you want to tell her is wrong with you!! From the common cold, to warts on your penis, this one has the power to force it out of you. She usually is wearing a wry smile and looks more than a little patronising to me.

So, now you have an appointment, usually booked for a week to ten days after you wanted it, by which time, the memory of why you ever got up at 8am to try to get an appointment in the first place for is a distant memory. It escapes you. So, now the dreaded, "Sorry but I have to cancel that appointment as I`m actually feeling fine now". You wait for the sigh and the clipped high pitched tone, of a very distressed, newly appointed nose ointment to tell you how you have now made another potentially sick person, wait for the doctor to have to re schedule his/her appointments. Meantime, he`s down there, eating ringed doughnuts from the BP garage swivelling on his chair oblivious, running late as per norm.

So then, when you get lucky at some point, and manage to see him/her, you feel stressed to start with, cause the newly appointed nose ointment, alias receptionist has cut you a filthy look and talked down to you like your a heap of shit, before you go in. My doctor takes deep breathes in between talking, so I have to wait until he has taken each one to chat. My 5 minutes is spent mainly on his breathing excersises, so what I resort to is asking for a repeat prescription. This is usually in spite of the fact that I have a stock pile of over 1.000 plus tablets, and could supply the local pharmacy myself to be honest. He`s totally unaware and breathes, in between printing me a repeat prescription with drugs from yesteryear included. ones, I am not even taking any more. Could be a nice little earner where I live?

Appointment finished, I go home, get on line, google my symptoms and once I see more than ten people with the same, usually head for the kitchen for a cuppa and a packet of digestives, singing the song I just heard on my car radio. Job done.. Next day, low and behold, I get a serious looking envelope from the practice reminding me that I haven`t had a smear test in 20 years, and would I like to book one, along with a pamphlet on the N.H.S support for smokers, but I have to book another appointment if I want the help...

So now I`m wondering why, my take a breath between talking doctor failed to tell me in person that I am 20 years late for my next smear test, plus offering me free patches and gum into the bargain? Funny, cause he found the time in between breathing to ask me if I smoked AGAIN.. I lied again, and cut the amount by half, in case I am rushed to hospital with a smoke related disease and the paramedics refuse treatment based on the truth. They can be patronising too. You can drink a vat of whisky every night and smash people up, including yourself, fall down the stairs, AGAIN, assault the kebab man AGAIN, have a falling out with your missus AGAIN and break her jaw, but tax payers don`t seem to mind footing the bill so much when it comes to you being a violent alcoholic as oppose to a non violent smoker. So long as your laughing when they pick up the pieces, they laugh with you. Smoke, and your the worst atrocity that god ever gave air space to. Your doctor is hooked on cocaine, but he`s very anti-smoking, as most doctors appear to be. Maybe if I had white powder stuck up my nostrils next time, he`d allocate me a ten minute slot?

Enough with the bright side. Now, shit is going to get heavy..

So now, just like with the police, we have to stop and rethink about who is actually there to protect us. and consider that the very same people we rely on for this are the ones we need to avoid like the plague. I am suspicious by nature, so some might say I`m a little paranoid but I can be spookily spot on sometimes and I`m more than just a little wary of my local GP,

We all know someone who has been burgled and that in itself is a sinister thought! Worse still, we now all know someone who has been misdiagnosed? Someone perhaps, who was sent home from his or her local GP with a headache, only to drop dead an hour later from a brain hemorrhage. If not that scenario, there are hundreds of others, but I think you catch the gist. These errors are sometimes fatal. They are so common these days that I am seriously beginning to suspect fowl play. I have considered the possibility of genocide? We aren`t talking Shipman here, he had an excuse for going on a killing spree, however warped it may appear to be. Law of averages tells me in no uncertain terms that these mistakes, are much too frequent to be coincidence?

After care, once you receive your initial diagnosis and are taking tablets that you can`t pronounce the name of, is sometimes non existent. I was taking a certain prescribed drug for 3 years, during which time, I was reviewed 3 times. After stopping the tablets cold turkey for more than 9 months due to several reported cases of people committing suicide on the particular drugs I was taking, I booked a routine appointment. Whilst there, the doctor casually asked how I was getting along with them, so I told him that I`d quit taking them for over 9 months since my last blood pressure test. He looked angry, I felt more than a little intimidated. He told me that you couldn`t just quit drugs like that cold turkey. I told him that I had. He dropped the subject like a hot potato and coughed nervously. I left without mention of any other treatment and without him asking me why I had quit the drugs..

In this period of time, I had mainly seen what are commonly known as locums. I`m of the belief that they are bit like supply teachers. They get paid a lot more money for a lot less care, and that is an extremely frightening thought considering that your own doctor doesn`t even look you in the eye. They scramble around, looking for your history online and then usually print prescriptions. They are waiting for you to leave, to answer personal calls from their banks. I had an interesting case, concerning a locum once who bounced over to me with hand outstretched, introducing himself like we`d met on "Match.com". I explained that I`d been experiencing some lower back pain. He promptly drew the curtains and asked me to touch my toes. I had a twinge, so I thought at this point, it was curious that he should then be asking me to lie on the couch and make a scissor shape by putting each leg up in turn whilst laying on alternate sides. I may not have been so offended, if it hadn`t been for the fact that I was wearing a skirt at the time! After these exercises I was back on my feet being asked to hold each arm up as high as I could. During this, he very obviously grabbed a feel of my left breast. I recoiled and considered the fact of the curtains being drawn. He told me that it was muscular pain and winked as I left with a prescription for some more potential money spinners? I was angry, confused and yet because I was in a GP`s surgery, didn`t feel I could complain. That was a long time ago mind. Now, he would get a right hook and a summons..

Our NHS has been quoted as being one of the best health care systems world wide. There are many reasons, I`m sure why this is still the case. However, when people are dying on trolleys, elderly are dying from dehydration, pregnant women who`s waters have broken are told to go home due to having no beds, patients are given the wrong drugs, or worse still someone elses, and waiting times have increased considerably over the years, I question why we think we reign supreme?

Sadly, I have witnessed one too many occasions whereby the NHS have treated people with a total lack of care and respect, and having lost a sister to cancer, and a mother to GP neglect, I have had experience with having to deal with both. We understand the basics, which apparently are that they are understaffed and do long shifts, which leads to sleep deprivation, which then leads to errors. However, when you consider the copious amount of mistakes that the NHS are responsible for, I am dubious about what the short staff are actually doing? I`ve frequently witnessed more than half a dozen staff small talking at the reception desk on ward, whilst watching red lights flashing amongst severely sick people, elderly and terminally ill patients waiting for help that rarely comes. This work, is classed under the umbrella of care, and yet I have seen nurses handling their patients with harsh impatience and curt manners. Given that you are the most vulnerable you could ever be, when lying in a hospital bed, completely at a strangers mercy, I can`t see any excuse whatsoever for not caring? I could elaborate on this subject as there are so many layers to this ongoing problem that the NHS are experiencing, but back to the original hub, GP`s could decrease the amount of people turning up at accident and emergency, by dealing with the initial consultation, with more care and understanding.

We`ve all seen the signs (more bloody signs than doctors), telling us that the NHS operate a zero tolerance policy for aggresive or threatening behaviour toward their staff? Some take that as a means with which to hide behind, when being rude, aggresive and intimidating themselves. It cuts both ways, as most things in life do. Most people, (not all) who visit their GP or local hospital have no desire to want to be there in the first instance, wether it be themselves or a friend or relation who is sick, they are generally, stressed. Maybe the short staff, should appreciate that fact before they speak. No doubt, there are verbally abusive people who don`t appreciate that others have to wait in these hell holes too and create mayhem. However, most of us are too sick to have the will or the want to blow out a candle, least of all, have a fight with a member of the NHS staff. I will never be brainwashed into believing that just because a person has more text book knowledge than I do about human anatomy, that he or she has the right to decide what happens to me, after they have diagnosed me. I will never stop questioning, the mere fact, that sometimes they are wrong! In fact, hospitals make more mistakes than any other institution in our country and given that they are holding our lives in their hands, I find this a very frightening thought indeed.

To an extent our health, is primarily our own responsibility, lifestyle choices, such as what we eat and drink are our choices. To smoke or drink, is again up to us. GP`s serve to educate those choices as their knowledge is presumably greater than ours, as to the risks involved in smoking and alcohol abuse. It`s not easy to discuss those choices, within a 5 minute allocated time slot, especially when that`s not usually the primary reason behind booking our appointment. Time is important when considering how to approach these subjects. Usually, you`re met with a frown of disapproval when your doctor first learns that you`re a smoker, which leads to you feeling intimidated. Of course many of them have this particular habit themselves, some worse, as mentioned earlier.

It would be easier to take the packet in and ask them why the Government see fit to issue health warnings on every one with graphic pictures of mutilated people and punchy print? Whilst doing this, grabbing a bottle of whisky and asking him where the same graphic, hideous, nightmare causing pictures are on these little beauties! Maybe then and only then would the GP be inclined to have a rethink about what health issues can be addressed when it comes to your next visit. .

To conclude, it would be a more ideal world if doctors seized to exist, because then we`d all be at home self medicating. Sadly, we`re living in a world full of sickness and diseases, new ones emerging as we speak no doubt and so the GP is usually our first port of call, when feeling under the weather.

I may well try out that tactic of "introducing myself" next time I pay my doctor a visit.. It will seem a little odd, as he will clearly have my name on screen right in front of him. However, if we can break the ice between us, then surely that`s a positive? I`m not sure about chatting about the weather, cause he`s sat normally planning his quarterly holiday to Mauritius. The "it`s a little bit chilly today isn`t it"? routine might make him jet off sooner. Might try a little "how`s the wife and kids routing"? Let`s hope he`s not recently divorced or in love with his dog.. Either way, yes maybe it doesn`t hurt for us to put ourselves in their shoes. I wouldn`t have the will or the want, to have to listen to people`s never ending complaints about their health, day in and day out. However, I would present a sunnier disposition, because I know how it feels to be sat the other side of the fence and I would make eye contact, presuming he/she wasn`t autistic. A doctor did imply once that I may be part of that spectrum and who knows, if I were as fond of labelling myself as some other souls seems to be, I`d bag that one and rock on my chair gently humming to myself on my next visit, just to see how attentive he really is! No disrespect intended, to those who are on the autistic spectrum as they are mainly every one I know.

I do have quite strong feelings on prescription drugs, and it`s my belief that they are a massive money earner. Pharmaceutical companies are marketing them, in their billions world wide. I hate the things myself, as they are equally as damaging and as addictive as illegal drugs. Basically, a lot of which are just modified prescription drugs. The long term damage some of these drugs can do, is what, in my opinion, is really costing the NHS money! Addiction comes in all forms and some people are carrying around a mini chemist as we speak, popping pills like tic tacs. I, personally prefer to self medicate whenever I feel I can, from drinking apple cider vinegar, upping my fruit and vegetable intake, and dancing to Ed Sheran`s "Bloodstream", which is quite ironic in itself really. I try to fake it, if need be until I feel it, and madly enough sometimes that`s all it takes to buck yourself up and make yourself feel better. Also, I find that if you balance a healthier lifestyle with a few guilty treats here and there, then it fools you into believing that you`re not a complete health freak, so that if you do feel a little under par, you`re not running out to the kitchen to bleach your vegetables or going completely organic. You`ll know then, your just human like the rest of all us idiots and won`t be beating yourself up with a celery stick..

The main point, I feel is to find time, whatever the weather to laugh because if you can do this, you have then found the best free medicine available to mankind, and it`s contagious too. What a lovely disease.

So, in conclusion, I have tried to keep this hub as light and breezy as I truly can be! If I let anybody into how angry I sometimes feel about witnessing some of the most horrific crimes that doctors are committing regularly, I would have to change my user name to "angry bird". Enough said.