What a week! We started back into the daily routines of the week having come back from a lovely time away over the festive period. Our son was complaining about having a bad back but over the weekend things developed and we realised that this seemed to be more that just some side affect of his snowboarding trip to Switzerland. On Monday night we took him to Whiston Hospital, Prescot and played 'the waiting game'. Eventually he was seen by a Doctor, after hours of writhing about in pain. The Doctor decided that he should go home, take 48 hours of antibiotics and wait to see if the infection would subside. It didn't and off to the local GP we went on Wednesday evening. The hospital doctor had assured us that if he was no better we would be admitted directly to the hospital without all the A & E 'waiting game' if we visited the local GP first. We duly paid our visit, sat, watched and listened to the GP call the hospital and book our arrival. A letter from the GP was written, signed and handed to my wife.
On arrival at the hospital no one knew anything about the GP's phone call and we joined the queue and were invited to play guess what - 'the waiting game'. Five hours later we eventually got admitted to a ward and see a Doctor. By this time our son was faint, retching with indigestion, having not eaten since three o'clock (as we expected him to be having an operation that evening) and generally exhausted from the infection that was surging through his body. The Doctor was very good and arranged for an anti-sickness drug, IV pain relief and an IV saline drip. As operating would not take place until the next morning our son was allowed to eat and once he was settled we eventually left the hospital at 1.30 am.
Thankfully on Thursday everything went according to plan and the operation went smoothly. The medical and nursing staff were excellent and we arrived home (after rapidly consuming hospital bangers and mash - my son, not me!).
When Friday came we had to arrange a visit to a surgery to have the wound dressed. Imagine our surprise when we were told that there were no slots in the surgeries left. NHS treatment in this country is bizarre. You, the patient, have to do all the running about! No one comes to your house (maybe if your are dying) and you have to argue and push even to get the back up care that is needed after you leave hospital.
This is not meant to be a letter of complaint but an observation that many people in our society would not be able to survive such a system or to battle their way through these procedures to get appropriate treatment when they are ill especially if they live on their own.
As a Christian I am glad that the care procedure of heaven is not like the one we have in this country. The bible says that for those who care to trust him, God will be with us when we go through 'the valley of the shadow'. That if we call He will answer. That those who are weary and burdened with life can come to him for rest. The provision of that rest was expensive; it was purchased by the death of the Son of God, the Lord Jesus, on the cross. On rising from the dead the words of the Lord Jesus became so pertinent - "I am the resurrection and the life, he that believes in me, though he were dead, yet shall he live" (Gospel of John 11. 25). Do you believe this?
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