Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,866
Thank you Captain.
I think that is the best, most explicit and at the same time extremely frightening Covid survivor article I have read.
Alec Sheldon likes this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,052
News from a Doctor on the front line:-
I’m horrified at the effect lockdown is having, particularly on the poor. A young woman recently sat in my outpatients clinic and asked me to take her children away. She was calm and at first I thought she was joking. ‘Why?’ I asked. She simply couldn’t cope any more. Then, as she began to sob, she confessed she was worried she would end up killing them and then herself. ‘I love them so much,’ she repeated as she begged me to take them into care. You have to be pretty desperate to try to give your children away. She lived in two rooms, and shared a bathroom and kitchen with another family. One child had autism, the other had behavioural problems and developmental delay. She has no family in this country. Day in and day out she sat in the room while her children screamed and wailed. I sat blinking at her, literally speechless. There were no day centres, no drop-ins — all sacrificed in the rush to lock down. She hadn’t seen her social worker for months. In the pandemonium of the pandemic, her community mental health team had effectively shut up shop and left her without any support. Now they just phone her occasionally. How she has lasted this long I have no idea. It’s easy for people in big houses having Zoom cocktails with their family to claim they know what’s best and insist that restrictions are imposed which mean others go stark-staring mad.
Brian Dixon and Jan Higgins like this
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Guest 4064- Registered: 10 Feb 2021
- Posts: 8
Crazy to look back on this now!
Ready to embrace life!
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,052
FWIW the mother of my children (aged 65 < 70) has just received by post her invitation for Chinese Corona Virus vaccination.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
We both had our first dose today at Dover Health Centre. Very quick and efficient. Not sure why we had to sit and wait for 10 mins afterwards though.
Reginald Barrington
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,254
So they can download the new operating system while you are still in range of the 5G mast
Captain Haddock, John Buckley and Andy B like this
Arte et Marte
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,866
Pablo wrote:We both had our first dose today at Dover Health Centre. Very quick and efficient. Not sure why we had to sit and wait for 10 mins afterwards though.
It is in case you have a reaction which would happen within an extremely short time.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,052
Captain Haddock wrote:FWIW the mother of my children (aged 65 < 70) has just received by post her invitation for Chinese Corona Virus vaccination.
And I've just been texted and have booked myself in for Mon. Brilliant system. Why can't life be more like this?
Same with local GP. E-mailed him last week with symptoms (hips playing up). He phones back next day to discuss. X-ray Tues. He e-mails back with prognosis Wed.
Almost thought I was in Estonia!
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
StJames Surgery in Dover steadfastly refuse to use e-mail to communicate with their customers. So do the Chaucer Hospital. If I email the surgery I get a phone call back. Sometimes they text but there’s never any way to reply to the text without phoning them and joining the queue. I find it an irritation beyond measure.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,866
I can not communicate with Pencester Health via email and I do not use my mobile except for family texts as I hate the thing, it is about time all surgeries made full use of emails. I tried to phone them on Friday in the afternoon as it is usually quieter then to be met with an answerphone message saying to contact Pencester (same group) when eventually getting past long winded numerous push button waffle I was number 5 in the queue, result I gave up.
BTW this was to try and book my vaccine at the Health Centre as it took 2 weeks for the GP letter (as mentioned in the NHS letter is what I should do) to arrive then we had the ice so I could not go out. I refused to go to Folkestone which is all the NHS could offer either on line or via the 119 number.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,052
Reading last two posts above perhaps it's time that we stopped act less like grateful patients, sitting for hours dumbly waiting for some grumpy administrator searching for our lost test results, and became more demanding customers.
Perhaps many NHS staff are only 'exhausted and rushed off their feet' because they are working inefficiently?
Both the examples above, if in a local business, would mean it would have gone bankrupt years ago as people took their custom elsewhere, but with the NHS many somehow put up with a crap service (£4.3 billion for clinical negligence last year) and then stand clapping like lobotomised seals in gratitude.
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,866
I suspect that far to many of the lower paid on the admin side are busy chasing their tails simply because those at the top are simply not up to the job having been shunted sideways rather than sacked.
The front line NHS staff are working their socks off at the moment, they are the ones who should be able to fight the system but far to many are either complacent or simply afraid to blow the proverbial whistle.
BTW my paramedic neighbour is at present slowly recovering from his second bout of Covid which for him was far worse than the first.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Brian Dixon
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 23 Sep 2008
- Posts: 23,940
jan, i had no problem with pencester road surgery yesterday [ friday ]. dialed the phone number got through to recieptionist and got a phone call back from the nurse prationer an hour later. and thats after 5 minuits of corona virus chit chat ended up no,3 in the que.
Weird Granny Slater
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,061
What a brave new world we're building.
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,254
Make sure you're clapping!
Arte et Marte
TheThinWhiteDuke- Registered: 7 Jul 2016
- Posts: 355
Brian Dixon wrote:jan, i had no problem with pencester road surgery yesterday [ friday ]. dialed the phone number got through to recieptionist and got a phone call back from the nurse prationer an hour later. and thats after 5 minuits of corona virus chit chat ended up no,3 in the que.
And that's five minutes of Corona chit chat that you're paying for.
More than a few times recently I have got through that only to be told that I am 11th or 12th in the queue.
On a couple of occasions I was offered a ring back option. Once it rang me back and I answered to a dead line. The other I answered and just got put through to the same recorded message again. I've mentioned that it doesn't work on more than one occasion but nobody seems inclined to look into it.
No wonder people give up. Perhaps that's what they want?
Brian Dixon and Jan Higgins like this
Weird Granny Slater- Location: Dover
- Registered: 7 Jun 2017
- Posts: 3,061
What a brave new world we're building, cont...
'Pass the cow dung, my dropsy's killing me' - Heraclitus
TheThinWhiteDuke- Registered: 7 Jul 2016
- Posts: 355
TheThinWhiteDuke wrote:And that's five minutes of Corona chit chat that you're paying for.
On a couple of occasions I was offered a ring back option. Once it rang me back and I answered to a dead line. The other I answered and just got put through to the same recorded message again. I've mentioned that it doesn't work on more than one occasion but nobody seems inclined to look into it.
No wonder people give up. Perhaps that's what they want?
Aaaaannnndddd it's happened again. Fourth in the queue (I was informed after five minutes). Requested ring back. Followed instructions to the letter. My phone rings and when answered all I get is the plinky plonky music again. Not even any menu options or anything. Clearly a dead line.
Called again and I am now 6th in the queue! Can't use ringback 'cause we know where that will lead. Infuriating!
Twenty minutes of my time so far. Fourth in queue as I type.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,866
TWD, it might be worth trying Pencester Health (865577) in the morning as they are in the same group, they might be able to get your notes if you explain the problem.
I got my jab this morning at long last in the Health Centre, so far no problems and they were very helpful to this awkward old lady.
TheThinWhiteDuke likes this
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,052
From the Political Editor Liverpool Echo Liam Thorp:-
So I’m not getting a vaccine next week - was feeling weird about why I’d been selected ahead of others so rang GP to check. Turns out they had my height as 6.2cm rather than 6 ft 2, giving me a BMI of 28,000
Pablo likes this
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson