A close brush with death

I'm sorry again for another extended absence from this blog.

This time I have a better excuse than the dog ate my blog post. I was in hospital, in the cardiac ward, after an unfortunate incident earlier this week.

I was rushed to hospital by ambulance by a crew which arrived almost instantly they were called, ushered me quickly but professionally into the ambulance and rallied me safely to A+E.

In A+E, I was triaged instantly and moved to the resuscitation area (though I was conscious at the time.) That's where I had my first brush with death. As I was receiving morphine and being examined, the person in the cubicle next to me (an elderly lady who'd been found in her nursing home room unconscious) failed to recover and passed away.

Later, as I recovered in the cardiac area of casualty, two more elderly patients who had suffered cardiac incidents failed to make it.

I was in the hospital for two days, and I saw up close and personal the tremendous dedication and ability of our frontline medical staff. From consultant cardiologists to porters, and all the student doctors, nurse practitioners and other staff in between, I couldn't fault the professionalism, patience or ability of anyone of them.

These people work in a literally hellish environment. Like the rings of Inferno, the wails of the ill pervade.

In some cases, the patients just do not stop fucking moaning. Sure, they're unwell and they're in hospital. But why add to a difficult situation by moaning your hole off all the time? Especially when the staff are performing superhuman efforts in almost impossible circumstances?

Anyway, my case ended up not being anywhere near as serious as it first appeared, thank goodness. I'm fine and dandy now, and after witnessing the deaths of three people this week, I'm very thankful and grateful to be so.

And it is the staff of our beleaguered health service I have to thank for that. I owe them all a great deal of gratitude.

And on their behalf and on behalf of all patients languishing on trolleys in casualty wards across Ireland tonight, may I just add, I hope Mary Harney dies alone in absolute untreatable agony with alsatians chewing her bloated carcass while she still lives, the fat evil bitch.

Not exactly Florence Nightingale

It seems that former Naas hospital nurse Noreen Mulholland has been found guilty on at least one charge relating to poisoning patients while working in Kildare in 2003.

As if it wasn't bad enough that people are dying while trying to gain admission to hospitals, then being infected with drug-resistant bugs and dying once they get a bed, do patients now need to worry about the staff killing them too?

This week alone, we've seen a surgeon taking out a patient's stomach by mistake, ten thousand people marching to complain about the continued downgrading of their local hospital, and a record number of complaints against doctors.

Years into the so-called reform of the Irish health service, when are we actually going to see a reversal in the slipping standards, never mind the long-promised improvements?