Squeamish folk look away now.
In the last couple of days I have become concerned that my op may have ended up going pear-shaped. Call me over-cautious if you wish, but this is my nob. I’m not taking any chances. Today, the current poor state of the NHS was emphasised to us on several occasions.
I didn’t want to call NHS direct, because they are powerless. They daren’t give a catagorical answer over the phone, because if they were wrong they could get sued. So all they ever do is refer you to A&E. A&E means a minimum of 2 hours in the company of the local sick, mad, and violent, until you get seen by an overworked, uninterested, tired doctor who really couldn’t give a monkey’s toss, and would prefer that you visited your GP..even if it was your GP that referred you to the hospital in the first place. Our wonderful new, semi-privatised, NHS is not coherent because every surgery, hospital and consultant is now concerned about individual spending. As a result, patients act as human tennis balls between uninterested, overworked GPs and uninterested, overworked hospitals. You can only hope that at some point you accidentally meet a doctor with some vestage of professional integrity who will actually endevour to make you better.
So, today, I wanted to make sure I didn’t have an infection. The only way to ensure this would be to have someone, ie a human, look at it. I can’t walk, for reasons that should be obvious to every uncircumcised male reader. And I had no intention of hobbling down to A&E via several busses, or paying for a cab, which would involve just as much walking.
Michele phoned the weekend GP service (SELDOC) who, of course, told her to take me to Lewisham hospital. No! I’d rather wait until my cock fell off and then sue them! She rang back and got someone else who, perhaps because he was male, took it more seriously. He organised a doctor to phone me back within an hour. A doctor did ring me back. His predictable suggestion was for me to drive to Lewisham hospital. In fairness he did understand that, not having a car, or any friends with a car, this was a problem. I had to ask 3 times for a home visit before his supervisor allowed it. He clearly appreciated my predicament, but was powerless until blessed by his supervisor. So we got the promise of a home visit within 2 hours. 3 hours later (not bad for the NHS on a Saturday night) a really nice quack turned up, inspected me and prescribed me a course of antibiotics. He also reassured me that it was probably nothing to worry about. Again, that is fine, but this is my nob. I need to be sure.
All the time he was here, Humph was quiet, well-behaved and even reverent! All day long, he was noisy and demanding but in front of the quack…not a peep. It’s like he (she) could tell there was something important going on. Good bird.

As you probably know by now, my hero, Charlie Brooker, got in all kinds of ultra-right trouble with his recent Guardian article. If you want to read it (now the Grauniad have bravely removed it from their site), you can see it here.