The more astute among you will recognise the Leonard Cohen pastiche. Others may leave now.
Well there we had it. It was the middle of the night. We are away staying in a perfectly pleasant B&B. Only it wasn't pleasant as I had succumbed to a recurrence of a raging dental abscess. Beastly thing if you've ever been there.
Of degrees of pain endured - or not - in one's life, first above any and all must have been the time one had ruptured a spinal disc in the neck. Childbirth - not that one has naturally though one has heard - a mere shadow. Passing a kidney stone (number two on the list) a mere bagatelle in comparison.
Anyway, so there we were at two in the morning in the middle of Kenilworth High Street - sleeping or sitting still not an option - stifling screams of raw agony from this wretched abscess, the only consoling thought being - and it mattered little - that this pain was marginally less barbaric than the aforementioned neck disc thing.
Having been this place before - dental abscess rather than Kenilworth itself - one knew that the sooner one began antibiotic treatment and pain relief the far the better. One had previously tried the 'bloke thing' and sought to ignore the infection and the pain in the totally vain and silly hope that both would pass of themselves, and from that bitter experience had learnt that medical intervention at the once was the only way to go.
But where to go if to go? Where precisely would one find the required 24 hour walk-in centre? That was the moot and the undetermined question. A man in less distress would have noticed the nice hotel folder on the bedside table providing exactly the information needed.
The man, though, was not acting rationally for he then took the stupid step of telephoning NHS Direct for directions.
The call went roughly thus:
NHS Direct - Hello
Me - Hello
NHS Direct - What do you want?
Me - To find where to go to subdue my raging pain.
NHS Direct - What's your phone number?
Me - Why do you need to know?
NHS Direct - We ask the questions.
NHS Direct - Now you have successfully answered, tell me your postcode.
Me - Postcode? What postcode! I'm standing in the middle of effing Kenilworth High Street at 2.00 in the morning. I have no frigging idea what the postcode is. This is a town called Kenilworth. It is in Warwickshire. It is situated approximately five miles between Coventry and Warwick. Just tell me where I need to go for urgent frigging assistance.
NHS Direct - What's your postcode? The computer won't let me process your call without a postcode.
Me - (All swearing under the sun.) Sod the bloody computer. Help me or watch me get really, really cross.
NHS Direct - Don't take that tone with me. Give me your postcode or die a miserable and deserved death!
Me - You and your system are the devil's invention and I curse you all to an eternity of pain, such as I now have and shall be yours world without end.
NHS Direct - Goodbye.
Me - Goodbye.
(See how we English always manage our intros and our outros so well!)
What utter, utter nonsense. A system that is supposed to help people who are lost to find their way, that cannot function unless you have a postcode.
Someone, somewhere, sometime must have sat down and in all seriousness thought: 'How can we design an IT system to help people who don't know where they are in relation to NHS facilities - say people who are travelling away from home - find where to go? We could of course design a system that lets people say "I'm somewhere in the west of Glasgow", or "I'm about five miles south of Swindon", or even "I'm slap bang in the middle of Kenilworth." But no, we won't do that. Far too obvious and simple that. Let's fox them completely by demanding of people who don't know where they are their postcode!'
Terrific idea in reality of course, for think of all those wretchedly expensive potential patients and consumers of precious NHS resources who will be denied access when they need it.
'Let them eat Aspirin', says NHS Direct.
'My arse!', I can only reply
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