Thank you for bringing up a long-repressed memory of a very traumatic experience. This is probably my earliest memory, and it's not a good one.

I developed asthma when I was about three, and I had to go to the hospital more than once when I was a wee little thing. So I was in the hospital, on oxygen in a crib with a plastic tent around it. The nurse had just checked on me, and I remember her walking away, and I saw the little girl next to me, just old enough to stand up in her crib, pull the oxygen hose out of my little airtight plastic tent. I yelled and banged on the side of the crib, but the nurse didn't hear me (I think her name was Mrs. Webb, and she was actually a very good nurse otherwise), and she just kept walking down the aisle to the other side of the ward. I was terrified, frantic, panicking, watching her walk away. After that everything went black, and the next thing I remember is waking up, being sponged off and breathing lovely air again (I'm sure it was antiseptic and hospital-smelly air, but it was air, and it was the best air I ever breathed).

I'm not sure if they ever told my parents what happened, because they did take me back to the same hospital again.
(magiceyes, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 22:43, Reply)

Whiskas reminds me that at 13 weeks, I too suffered an 'incident'
I was booked in for a D&C but was still having ongoing pregnancy signs, so I refused to go for it until I'd had a scan.

My doctor placated me by sending me for one, with a letter which I of course opened and read.

It said 'Thank you for seeing this girl. She has suffered a (medical term here) but says she still 'feels pregnant'...'

The gist was, let her see her dead baby and she'll soon get over it.

Long story short, my little 'incident' will be collecting his PhD this summer!
(Juan Quar is clinging to her front teeth on, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 22:33, 5 replies)

once i stuffed a stone up my nose without anyone seeing me and it got stuck
as i was 4, people only had my word. so i was taken to the doctor, who confirmed that i had, in fact, inserted a stone up my nose.

my dad then spent several hours waiting in A&E with me. when we went through, they wrapped me very tightly in a blanket so i couldnt move my hands and feet and advanced on me with the most enormous pliers i had ever seen...

17 years later, my parents have kept the stone in a jar and get it out for visiting boyfriends. cheers guys!
(ladyintheradiator, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 22:12, 2 replies)

When I was a child
our family dentist had the hairiest nostrils I have ever seen, before or since. Being sat underneath his nose in the chair was like how a mouse would feel if it stood between Billy Gibbons and Dusty Hill of ZZ Top, and looked up.

He always seemed to have an enormous, gristly bogey in one of his nostrils too.
( Monty Boyce, My cheese game is strong, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 21:19, 1 reply)

May 2008 I lost a baby
at 13 weeks.

The technical term for this is an abortion but as I got near hysterical when it was referred to that way they called it a miscarriage. Then one nurse said to me that I was making a fuss over no more than a "dot". I asked her if she had children, been pregnant or lost a much wanted baby after it had been confirmed by the doctors and she said that she had not.

I told her to come see me when her "dot" was scraped away.
(whiskas loved by 8 out of 10 cats, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 21:14, 7 replies)

Breasts!
Back in 1998, I found a lump in my tit. A bit worried, I toddled off to the doctor who said it was just a cyst. A few days later, my tit was huge, and had red veins running through it.
Back to the doc, who agreed with me that it was an abcess and was promptly given antibiotics.

3 days later, tit so huge and painful I couldn't even wear a bra and was crying in agony. Called the doctor who sent the then husband and I off to casualty to get it lanced.
The consulting doctor took one look, said I'll be right back. 10 minutes later I'm being wheeled to a bed for emergency surgery the following morning.

Woke up feeling a little groggy to discover the husband had phoned my gran as he couldn't get a hold of mum, telling gran "batshit's having emergency surgery right now on her breast". Gran panics, calls mum at the school she taught at. Mum panics until I am finally able to calm everyone down.

The following day, the nurse comes to change my dressing - they'd left the wound open but packed so as not to re-infect it and to allow the pus to drain. It hurt like a motherfucker.

The day after I was discharged, the district nurse came to change the dressing. He was male. I'm laid on the bed with my tits out. He pulls out a long metal stick and told me he was going to measure the wound. I calmly put my hand under his balls and told him "you hurt me, I'm going to hurt you". Didn't feel a thing, but the following day a different nurse came round to change the dressing and apparently I'd scared this guy so much that he refused to come back.

Then I got chicken pox, so had an additional week off work as well as the two weeks my tit was healing.
I now have a lovely scar right on the side of my nipple, and if you draw two eyes on the other side it looks like a smiley face :0)
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 20:39, 1 reply)

Screaming like a little girl
Years ago, I got knocked off my motorbike in the middle of Bristol. I made my way to the emergency room in Filton Hospital, and the nurses couldn't have been nicer to me as they checked me over and took x-rays.

However, there was another motorcyclist being treated in a room down the corridor. The screams of pure agony he was making outclassed any horror movie. When I asked why our treatment differed so, the nurse replied that - since I had been wearing leathers, gloves, boots, etc., they felt sorry for me and looked after me. However, the other guy was wearing a T-shirt and shorts. Because they thought he was a twat, they

were cleaning the gravel out of his skin with raw Dettol and a scrubbing brush.
(lustfish, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 20:16, 2 replies)

There are some nice midwives out there
but that is not what this QOTW is about.

When I was eight months pregnant with my son I answered the door one day and the two people on the doorstep who asked to come in were the head of midwifery and A.N. Other medical section head.

It turns out that the midwife I had seen a couple of days before had put in a formal complaint because she was frightened by my threatening behaviour. The midwife who was not encumbered by a belly the size of a bus, stood six inches taller and twenty years younger than me did not like being told that she ought to read my notes before sounding off with a load of irrelevancies and wasting my time.

Six weeks later I had a planned home birth attended by two of the nicest midwives around.
(whiskas loved by 8 out of 10 cats, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 19:59, Reply)

Mental health.
I've recently been having a few batshit episodes (now under control) and reverted back to the teenage habit I had of cutting myself. Not trying to kill myself, but cutting my arms up with a razor.

A few times leading up to Xmas, my boyfriend and his daughter called the cops on me for a welfare check and I ended up being hospitalized "for my own safety". Fuck, I kept telling the cops I never tried to kill myself (the cuts were on the arms, not the wrists) but I was handcuffed and duly hurled into an ambulance and sent off to the hospital.

My last stay, the nurse was a complete bitch. Total fucking bitch. When I asked for some water, she grudgingly got it a while later. When the guy in the bed was puking his guts up, and me being severely emetophobic (fear of vomit), she refused to move me. In fact, she told me to "grow up" and asked me what kind of childish person tries to kill themself anyway. I duly got the supervisor on duty and told her that there was no way in hell was this nurse going to take care of me. The supervisor agreed.

The only saving grace about that hospital visit was the security guard (yeah, on a mental health evaluation you're constantly watched by security). He got cigs for me on his break, walked me out to smoke whenever I wanted, ate his lunch with me, all the while making me laugh.

Oh, and the reason for my batshitness was quite literally the depo birth control shot. It's mainly out of my system although I still have severe depression. Lucky I didn't end up in the hospital the other night after my boyfriends daughter told me I should just go kill myself. Stupid cunt.

Edit: This is in the US, each 24hr hold was $3,000 and I don't have insurance. Also, the ambulance fees were $700 each trip.
( Batshitmentalist is sane for once, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 19:55, 11 replies)

worst. hangover. ever.
about 17 years ago, i made a very bad decision. namely, that drinking homebrew whisky was a good idea.
it wasn't.
the first thing i knew about being in hospital was briefly waking up, just in time for a nurse to shove a tube down my throat, whilst another nurse cut my clothes off me. thankfully, i passed out again before they had to give me a stomach pump.
i woke up properly at 10 a.m, feeling worse than hammered shit. seriously, i couldn't have kept water down. i'm a bit pleased that i didn't complain, it was self-inflicted, after all.
after spending an horrendous 24 hours vomiting charcoal, suffering the worst headache known to humanity and, most memorably, hallucinating an old lady in the day room, i was allowed to go home.
for those 24 hours, AT NO TIME were any of the staff anything but helpful, sympathetic and professional, whether i deserved it or not. none of them even called me an idiot which, quite frankly, i did deserve.
( Smash Monkey lowering the tone of the whole internet, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 19:44, Reply)

When me daughter turned up (quick rp);
pregnancy and mainly the giving birth part is fucking horrible. Whoever said that it's a beautiful thing to witness or be a part of must've been so drugged up on gas and air at the time that they probably tried to hold the nurse instead during the labour while shouting "It's a boy!", instead of actually witnessing the gorefest which was coming from the pissflaps instead.

Me wife had a long(ish) 38 or so hour labour. It was full of her suffering and in pain whilst waiting for our "little visitor", so I enjoyed this immensely. When she was starving and waiting for our daughter to turn up I sat right next to her eating a sandwich, taking my time to chew the bread as loudly and as long as possible while she sat there legs akimbo fucking starving herself on doctor's orders. God I'm a cunt. Mrs Jeccy wasn't that uncomfortable through this as she was epiduralled through her back and upto her tits on drugs, so she was sitting there mostly being examined from time to time by docs checking her progress.

We get to the point where the docs aren't happy about the baby taking the scenic route (ie taking her time, not via the colon) and out come the stirrups. Legs go even higher akimbo and Mrs Jeccy's in a bit of pain bless :p After some rapid pushing techniques, which coincidentally resembles a German Shiester flick (apparently) the doc goes in with a medical plunger and pulls our daughter free. The nurses quickly wipe her off, cleaning all the blood and making sure our Nell is ok, which she was considering they just plumbered her out of a cunt. They pass her to me and she's very pale in colour but is crying as they all do. Definately her mother's then :p
Now things start going to shit. I pass her over to her mum who tries to breastfeed her. Within 2 seconds Mrs Jeccy turns yellow and cock-eyed, while dropping Nell off her chest. I literally catch my daughter who'se on mid-slide towards the floor and then hear the doc shout "I NEED A HAND HERE!". I glance over to where he is, which is glaring up the missus's bloodied love gusset as blood fountains out towards him. Nell's taken off me as literally 6-7 nurses all run in and I'm ushered out, stepping in her blood as I walk out. Woah, ummmmm, oh dear?

I take a deep breath and go outside to meet me mum and sis, who are informed of the baby as good and Mrs Jeccy as bad so I urge them to stay outside for a minute, then I come back inside to see what's going on. Now there's 10+ nurses in the same room with the doc and the missus is delirious on the bed shouting "Jeccy, I'm not going to die am I?" before I get ushered out again. I run back outside for a minute and let me mum know again what's happening then after 2 minutes go back inside.

Now things go fucking mental.

I walk back into the room and the first thing I notice is the silence. There is hardly any sound at all in the room, all except for Nell who makes a quick crying gurgle in the corner. I then realize there's no nurses there, no doc, no Mrs Jeccy or her bed in the room. They're all gone, except for a giant puddle of blood in the centre of the room. I've never seen a puddle of real blood like this in my entire life; it spanned almost the width of the room and was a crimson red. To the left of this pond sat a placenta in a tray on top of a unit and to the right sat my daughter in a small incubator tray. My brain could not deal with this. It hadn't helped that a few nights earlier I'd converted "Silent Hill" to play on my PSP and it had a level with lots of blood and babies in it. This just fucking freaked me well out. After about 20 seconds of me staring around this John Carpenter scene I did kinda shout a bit loud "WHAT THE FUCK?????" to which a nurse in the next room heard and come in. She told me that the wife had been rushed to the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) to stop her from bleeding to death. She's taken a serious tare in her womb when the placenta come out and was bleeding like a pig in a butchers.

Mrs Jeccy obviously survived this, although it turned out that she lost over 4 units of blood during the bleed. The doc managed to stitch her up internally (that would make one hell of a Scout's badge btw -"I earned my "Internal-cunt sewing badge") and after a good transfusion she was able to hold the baby the next day.

In fairness they did save the missus from a fate worse than death, which...um...was death actually. It was just a complete mindfuck the way they went about it though.

The moral of this story btw is if you want a woman to bleed, stab 'em in the cunt.....no wait, no matter how much blood you see they can still survive it. It looks messier and more than it really is, although it's murder getting it out of rape victims. Apparently.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 19:29, 2 replies)

went to a doc in a box
Cause I broke my hand punching the wall. Got x-rays and explained how I did it (punching the wall instead of someone). The "doctor" called me an idiot and sent me on my merry way, with no treatment. The discharge paper said "don't be an idiot." I never paid that bill.
(CactusZack Shaved his coin purse on, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 18:56, 2 replies)

Hospital Hell
I've had several bad experiences with dentists and doctors, all involving recommendations for completely unnecessary, extremely expensive treatment, including surgery. Fortunately, I question everything, including doctors' recommendations, which has helped me avoid a lot of pain and suffering.

I have needed major surgery three times. After one surgery, I woke up in the surgical recovery ward with an incorrectly assigned patient sharing my room, a heroin addict who had checked herself into the hospital for rehab against her doctor's orders and who, of course, should've been in the drug rehab unit, not the surgical recovery unit. Without going into a lot of detail, I'll just say it's very unpleasant to share a room with someone who is hallucinating, virtually climbing the walls, and threatening you with physical harm (claimed to have a knife and was going to cut my throat when I was sleeping) when you're only semi-conscious and can't sit up, much less get out of bed.

It's even worse when you're assigned a nurse who expects you to get out of bed by yourself and shower less than four hours after surgery, even though you haven't actually woken up from the anesthesia and the doctor gave orders not to bathe for a few days after surgery due to our six inch abdominal incision. Gets worse: When I was unable to comply with the nurse's screaming demands, she decided to punish me for lack of cooperation by refusing me food and water, and later admitted writing on my chart not to allow me food and water so that the next nurses on shift wouldn't give me any. I contacted my doctor who had me released and sent home 36 hours post surgery, though she had expected me to be in the hospital for 5-6 days for recovery due to the seriousness of the surgery. She felt I'd be far better off home with my frail, elderly grandmother tending to me.

BTW, the heroin addict was forcibly removed from the hospital - kicking and screaming - by security. I have to admit I enjoyed watching that. Then, as I was dressing to leave, the nurse apologized for her behavior the first day, saying that she had been a bit short tempered because she had been on the last of three shifts in a row due to a nurse's strike at the hospital. I wanted to point out that her short temper could've resulted in serious injury to me and a hefty lawsuit against the hospital and her; instead, I kept my mouth shut and got out of there as fast as I could.

In all fairness, I'll mention that my other surgeries, both of which required multi-day hospitalization, were completely different. Everyone was pleasant, caring and professional.
(bunnybutt, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 18:54, Reply)

Splashing Blood
When I was a sprog I fell out of a tree and sprained my ankle well enough for it to swell to about the size of a softball. The orthopedist who looked at me decided to decompress my swollen joint with an enormous stainless steel syringe. The cool part was after he filled the syringe he emptied it noisily into a basin. I can still remember the splashing sound my blood made as it hit the basin.
(uncle_bud is not the jelly roll king., Fri 12 Mar 2010, 18:23, Reply)

Nurses gave me my name!
Mum couldn't decide on what name to give me. As she was kept in for some time after my (awkward) birth, the nurses eventually decided for her and put it on a board. "This baby is called .... ...."
It stuck.
( Blind Meach Cautiously optimistic, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 17:52, 3 replies)

I got attacked by a crazed smackhead
and had my front teeth broken, not off, but bent back into my mouth to the point where I couldn't close my mouth, and was swallowing more than a little blood.
I was 17.
Got taken to the local hospital in Romford by an ambulance, waited til about 2am til someone was able to sort me out.
Turns out he was one of the leading maxillofacial surgeons in the country and had driven all the way from surrey to help.
Very nice guy.
Unfortunately, due to a genetic cocktail of both my parents, who are severely unreactive to anaesthetic, I got the combo of their peculiar toughness, and was able to feel every nerve-jangling bit of the guy pliering my teeth back into my broken face.
It was shit, and as it turn out the blood vessels in the teeth were all broken, so eventually I just had to have them cut out and replaced.
Top service though.
(fantomex, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 17:47, Reply)

Me friend's wife is training to become a midwife.
Nice girl, always managed to hold good intellectual conversations with her too. The last time we spoke she told me that she's helped deliver 2 babies so far.

For no apparent reason my immediate answer was "Hurhurhur, touched another minge, hurhurhur...".

Ah well.
( Jeccius Steam Borderlands 2 junkie, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 17:35, Reply)

Why do these people become nurses?
Back when I was an emotionally fragile little teenager I had to go for a blood test. I was visibly terrified and clung to my mother like a velcro koala. So scared was I that I had to put numbing cream on the inside of my elbow to dull the eventual pain a bit (this is relevant).

As my number was called and I sat down in the tiny little cubicle, I looked up into the ruddy face of the nurse with tears in my eyes, hoping for at least some mild reassurance. The nurse looked back with a glare so potent it would have frightened off a thunderstorm.
I shrank into the chair, wondering what I had done to inspire such hatred. She then saw that I had numbed my arm and acted as though I had personally insulted her.

After what seemed like an hour she unceremoniously grabbed my arm and prepared to stab one of my veins. As she was doing so she uttered the immortal words:

"Have you had a bad experience [with blood tests]?"

No, not up until then, you bloated, pug-faced harridan. I could have sworn she took an extra vial of blood just to spite me.
(Blue Phoenix, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 16:57, 3 replies)

A Battle of Head Vs Lip
When I was a smaller platypus, around 11 years of age, I had an accident at school. A boy came round the corner one way, hands in pockets, head down, as I was going the opposite way round said corner, carrying a chair. BANG. His head makes contact with my lip, forcing my lip to try its hardest to disappear into my throat, ripping itself on my teeth as it does so. Boy starts shouting that I should have been looking where I was going, I start wondering if my lip has actually detached itself from my face or not, and how I stop the spurts of blood that are now decorating the school corridor.

On discovery by a teacher I was given the obligatory wet-paper-towel-treatment that was our school's version of first aid. (When in doubt, soak a paper towel in cold water, and cover the child with as many as necessary until they are a shivering wreck) I was sent home with an edited version of the mandatory 'bumped-head' note and that was that. It was up to me to explain the fact my swollen lip was flapping around in front of my teeth and I had now developed a speech impediment. Thankfully my teeth hadn't gone all the way through the lip, just most of the way, forcing the tissue forward creating an outwardly protruding lump.


Our doctors surgery was nearer to where my dad lived, so my mum decided that he could take me when I visited him that Saturday. My dad had a look and decided it wasn't that bad and I'd be better leaving it to heal up by itself. This didn't go well with my mum, who ended up taking me herself. The doctor took a look and decided surgery was the only option, and referred me.

The surgery itself was fine, it was the first time I'd ever been in hospital but was made to feel okay about the whole thing. The nurses were friendly and reassuring, no complaints about that at all. The op went well, the surgeon did his thing and promised that once the swelling went down it would look almost like it used to. Off I went, mouth stitched and under orders only to drink through a straw for the rest of the day.

My mum bundles me into a taxi and off we go. Still woozy from the anaesthetic I'm half asleep for most of the ride until I feel something on my tongue. Stuck tongue out, removed object, turns out its one of my stitches. Mum does a quick check to see if it's caused any bleeding, no, so we carry on home. Getting ready to get out the taxi, when stitch number two falls out.

Over the next two days all the stitches have come out and I'm mumbling like an idiot from the swelling and my mouth isn't smelling too great. Mum drags me back to hospital, where they give the wound a quick clean and mutter something about how this sort of thing always seems to happen, a total contrast to the attitudes of the staff when I had been in for the op, and instead of restitching it, I am given a pack of steri-strips, and told not to get them wet and sent on my way. This is fine and dandy, except the wound is IN MY MOUTH. I tried my hardest to dry my mouth before putting them on, but it was a fruitless effort. I think the longest I managed to get one to stick was about 3 hours before it gave up.

The wound did finally heal up on its own, but the scar on the inside of my mouth has two ridges on it due to the poor stitching efforts.
I never did figure out how I managed to get hit in the face while carrying a chair...
( Poppy The Platypus was abducted by an army of toast soldiers on, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 16:43, 1 reply)

arg!
I once went to one of those "jack in the box" type clinics because I had a nasty foot injury due to my being a jackass and trying to inject happy juice via my foot. I went in thinking of various lies I could tell the doctor so he wouldn't suspect the horrible truth. Finally when the doctor came in the room I said "what the hell" and told him exactly how I got injured.

The douchebag doctor actually sneered at me and told me I needed to get down on my knees and pray to Jesus. He then handed me a religious pamplet and walked out of the room, refusing to treat me. I was stunned and on the brink of hysterical laughter.

Finally I got another doctor who claimed to be an alcoholic who understood my plight. I wasn't sure whether to be thankful or leave. I decided that I would choose antibiotics from a boozer over guilty prayers anyday.
(ieatkidsforbreakfast, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 16:35, 1 reply)

Last year I had an trouble breathing... seasonal thing
nee naw nee naw
back of the ambulance..... great just what i need - instead of the usual here have some drugs we have
we're calling an ambulance.... faaaaaaaantastic
injections here, there and even in my wrist!
drugged out of my skull on oxygen etc
i got better
they did tests on my blood
now i use an asthma pump that supposedly stops it....
well it doesn't
self medicating steroids helped clear my airways

Breathing is great
( SkUG >_O i got a couple of stitches in my eyeball... ow, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 15:56, Reply)

I was in my early twenties about twenty years ago
and as was right and proper I had been sewing my oats with abandon and very little discrimination. Unsurprisingly therefore aquired some infection resulting in suppurating stinking puss and terrible itching, what was surpring was that when I went to the clinic to get the cotton bud down the cock treatment it was Ambreem , my big sister's best pal, medical student and particular wank fantasy for me who appeared to administer the treatment . i froze , she froze but said she didn't mind if I didn't . I decided I did , so she went and got a proper Doctor instead .
( horace wimp needs more than 49 characters to fully express hi, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 15:55, 2 replies)

Dear God, where to start...
Suffice it to say, in my career in th'ambulance service, I have been to a variety of amusing calls. One, however, sticks in the mind most vividly.

You know a call is going to be bad when the controller is giggling before even passing details. The call came through as "22 year old male with foreign object in rectum."

We proceed to the call under emergency driving conditions whilst quietly sniggering. We enter the property to find a young chap with a hastily thrown on dressing gown.

"So, what seems to be the problem then?" I ask.

"Well" he said. "I was painting the bathroom and I slipped and fell and landed on the toilet brush."

Now, I have an enquiring mind. Sometimes, too much. Certain questions raised themselves to me.

1: Who paints the bathroom naked?

2: If you did such a thing, would there not be signs that the bathroom was in the process of decoration?

3: In the event that 1 & 2 cannot successfully be explained, please answer the following: how come it went up bristle end first. Up to the handle?

Indeed.

We transported said gentleman to hospital on his front, the handle gently tenting the blanket like some faecal backwards erection.
( Undercovercarrot got done for gross misconduct on..., Fri 12 Mar 2010, 15:51, 8 replies)

Boots
A few weeks ago, I went to Boots, bought a bottle of 85 so-called Arsenic pills, and downed the lot. Result - nothing. It's almost as if they are selling ineffective crap as if it were real medicine. Pfft.
( Amish Information Systems hates misplaced, commas, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 15:40, Reply)

When I was 20 I had a bit of a scare with a cyst in the nether regions.
It was embarrassing enough going into the hospital to have my genitals poked and prodded, but the name of my urology consultant didn't help.
( Zuowan, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 15:11, 1 reply)

Marternity Ward
Due to lack of funding at the birth of my daughter I had to replace one of the stirrups.

By replace I mean hold the mothers leg for the whole duration whilst the midwife held the other. I saw everything, blood, poo, piss. Luckily I held it together for the whole time, even when getting shouted at for trying to be a loving and soothing partner by rubbing her leg which due to the epidural could not be felt and was freaking her out.

Once baby born I rushed to the window for some air so I didn't pass out.

In a way glad that the sirrup was missing because I got to see the whole birth.
(langers, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 14:40, 1 reply)

I remember as a kid being round my Uncles house when he pipes up:
“Hospitals. Avoid them, son. Avoid them like the plague. I was so off my head on drugs when I’ve been in the damn places all I can remember are vivid, freaky, scary as shit flashbacks,” my Uncle shakes his head mournfully. “Puking in bins… Picking fights with security guards… Walking round with my bare arse hanging out… Blatantly trying to get a handful of moist hot nurse-kootch by ramming my hand up their skirts…” and he trailed off, I could see the sadness, the regret, the naked pain, the shame in his eyes.

I thought about this for a bit, then I replied. “Uncle… I’m pretty sure that’s why you lost your job as a surgeon.”

Fuck it, it’s Friday.
( SpankyHanky, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 14:17, 3 replies)

lets face it
Everyones opinion of the NHS is firmly based on their own experiences. Yes I beleive the concept of the NHS is a good thing, however the reason why people really don't like it, is because of the way the government and primary care trusts run it. They seem to waste ridiculous amounts of money on middle management that are so far removed from being aligned with what the doctors and nurses think that they are a waste of time. They are given targets by the govt that these management people have to adhere to. This makes the focus purely on money rather than the care of the patient. How can that be a good thing!? My experiences of the NHS have been completey different from each other. Once i fell through a plate glass window and had a massive gash on my elbow, yes the wound was very bad but on arrival I was told by a nurse that there is nothing she can do because it looked like a dog bite and they don't stich dog bites up, as she was just prepping for this another nurse came along and said "you cannot do that to him, you have to stitch him up", "Hmph" the other nurse says, "im not doing that it would take ages". Yes it did take ages, 55 stitches and 6 hours later I was fully stitched up by this awesome nurse. The thing that worried me, is that if it wasn't for this caring nurse just passing by at the right time my arm would have been very badly disfigured just because of the laziness and arrogance of the complete bitch . So it's not just the govt and PCT's that are at fault some people are just assholes and whether they work on a construction site or a hospital, they are going to be the same old a-holes, the nurse that stiched me up was awesome, she had been working for the NHS for 7 years, so had seen people being rude to her and all the rest of it but rather than taring all members of the public with the same brush, she treated people on a case to case basis. This is an invidual kind of story but an example of targets etc was when I broke my hand, a very tired, over worked and ragged junior doctor had told me that because it was a compound fracture the bone needed to be aligned, the forces that be agreed that the opp needed to happen, they then sent me to a bed to wait for the opp. 14 hours later I was awoken by a consultant that told me that due to the lack of beds at the moment they couldn't do the operation, which resulted in me having limited functionality in my right hand.

I think if people just say we should not say anything about the NHS because we get it for free .Number one it definatly isn't free, we pay for it through taxes. The governments invovement with the NHS only puts impossible pressure on the NHS with crazy targets, so i do feel for the many good people that work in these places but it's not a fantastic instution that some people paint due to the huge amount of buracracy that goes on. A good example of this is the post code lottery that goes on for certain life saving drugs. Just imagine having to tell them someone that, ash well your gonna die but if you lived two miles down the road you would have lived....
(bROKEN aRROW PUA HVI Master, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 14:12, 6 replies)

It made me most incensed
When the Americans were slagging off the NHS. Sure the NHS isn't perfect, but it's free and universal. The only major fault I can see is a combination of bad management and politicians using it as a bargaining chip.
There was a lot of mud-slinging and it disgusted me. One argument was that if Senator Kennedy was treated in the UK, he wouldn't have survived nowhere near as long. But in America, if he wasn't stinking rich and was one of the 30 million Amercians that can't even afford medical insurance, he would've received no ongoing treatment whatsoever. The biggest cause of bankruptcy in America is medical bills.

You hear some horror stories about the NHS. How do they weigh up against the vast number of success stories?

I've been on long-term medication for epilepsy since 1991. They changed the drug to a fairly new one in 1996 (which has worked perfectly ever since). One day, being curious, I asked the pharmacy how much these tablets cost. He dug a book out and checked. It worked out about £4.50 per tablet. That price will have come down significantly as they're now produced by other companies now. (I think it's something to do with patents running out).
In 2005 I was diagnosed with a dicky thyroid, so now I have to take thyroxine every day for the rest of my life. At no cost to my pocket.
A couple of years ago, I had a bit of a funny turn and I thought my epilepsy was beginning to manifest itself again, so I was sent for an MRI. No charge. I can't imagine what that might have cost in America without insurance.

A couple of months back, they investigated my Dad as to why he had high blood pressure. They did a scan and they ended up bypassing a section of his carotid artery. He went in on the Sunday teatime, and was home again by Tuesday lunch with an impressive scar and a bottle of painkillers. It cured his high blood pressure immediately. Didn't cost him a penny. He's going back in a few weeks to sort his cataracts out.

My uncle Ernie is having both hips replaced. No charge. My mother-in-law once had a kneecap replaced at no cost.

My mate got bit on his finger by his guinea-pig. He got some antibiotics but it didn't clear up. He ended up having it operated on to clear out the infection, plus a bit of plastic surgery and then physiotherapy because he's a pianist. No charge.

There are dozens of other similar success stories

So those who slate the NHS for whatever reason, stop and think, weigh up the pro & cons and you'll see that the NHS is pretty fucking ace really.
( sandettie light vessel automatic New Twitter - @bollocksreally, Fri 12 Mar 2010, 14:04, 6 replies)