So I'm stripped to the waist and lying on a gurney and have been for about five hours. I've got a couple of different types of sticky patch electrode things all over my chest, and one on either ankle. The room is full of bright light, this freaking heart monitor behind me is beeping about three times faster than it should be, and all I can think is "Bored. Really, really, bored".
If you haven't yet experienced the joy of public hospital emergency departments, then let me first thank you for your contribution to my well-being (along with the well-being of many others), but damn I wish you all had contributed a little more.
Since last Thursday I've been in and out of the local emergency with this weird heart trouble and have only just extracted myself from it for at least a few hours of non-hospital food and non-ill people. There's every chance I'll be back in there sometime in the next couple of days. Joy.
What's going on? Well, despite a number of years of ensuring that I exercise, eat reasonably, don't over-indulge in all the fun things, and generally take care of numero uno the old ticker seems to have other plans for me.
Luckily it doesn't seem to be anything immediate or dangerous, else they never would have discharged me with one aspirin and a promise to mail my paperwork with me. That said, after a day of erratic behaviour the heartbeat had leapt up to 170 from a normal state of about 50-70 and sat there for two hours before I started thinking, "hmmm... this ain't right", and took myself over to Newtown. The emergency people were kind enough to take this seriously (again), found me a bed and a monitor, and there I lay.
Let me reiterate that this was my third trip in four days to the same emergency with slightly different symptoms.
Let's be clear that my gripe isn't about any of the staff, including the cardiologist who had to head home last night after spending 16 hours in surgery (apparently). My gripe isn't about the facilities, which seem to have had all the bells and whistles you'd expect in a city the size of Wellington (and which weren't too different from anything I saw visiting friends hospitalised in Melbourne). I think my gripe is with anyone who suggests that too much money is spent on public hospitals.
Sure there was a woman on the other side of the emergency room who kept getting up and going outside for a smoke. Turns out that she was in with chronic emphysema, though that didn't stop her getting a cancer stick in her. Sure there was someone who hadn't been taking their insulin correctly. And there was one emergency involving medical people running left and right that turned out to be nothing more than a chunder, but you still can't tell me that providing a free service isn't a public good.
My main gripe is that despite having lain on the gurney for 4 hours a registrar was finally free and able to get some medication in me (the heartbeat had been freaking out for over 6 hours by then), and having laid on the gurney for another three hours till a bed turned up in the cardiology ward, that I laid in the ward for 18 hours until I could be told that the cardiologist still didn't have time to see me, and here's a couple of aspirin.
There's a small tinge behind the sternum telling me I'll be back in there sometime in the next two or three days. I've already packed a bag with a toothbrush, book etc.
Now, I understand the concept of triage. But you've got to wonder how much work they're loading on that cardiologist if he can't find 10 minutes to tell someone, "You need to take this, and this" (which is what a succession of very pleasant nurses told me).
And that's my last gripe. Poor bastard must be run off his feet.
I resolved to come home and listen to a little Mclusky Do Dallas to reflect my mood. I could have elected to lie in the hospital bed for up to another 24 hours till the cardiologist was free, but...