Monday, 22 April 2013

Dicks and Groovy Peeps

Yeah, that's more like it.
Blasted down the Taff Trail this morning, and it only took me about an hour and pocket change to do the 5.5 miles. Kind of on a mission, kind of just enjoying the feel of my legs working.

Not to come off all "and the moral is..." here , but having recently lost a bit of the bodily control I'm used ot in my ear, it really did remind me of all the things I'm still perfectly capable of doing, to go and do the Trail this morning. Also of course, it blew the last remnants of yesterday's "whiny head" off me. Came back, had my 400 calorie cereal breakfast (so technically, as far as I know, I was still calorifically ahead of the game at that point).

Went to my hospital appointment for a proper, soundproofy hearing test. Very strange - positively Victorian metal head-contraption, plus two sets of headphones, one of which blasted various levels of white noise into my working ear.

Bottom line is this: The steroids might feel freakin' dandy for the most part, and I still feel there's a bit of an improvement in what I'm picking up in the right ear since I started taking them, but on a graph - zilcho!

"Sooo," I asked the same nice doc that I saw privately last week, "what does that mean?"
"They're probably not going to work," he said. "In fact, it would be a miracle if they worked now, and I'm not looking for miracles."
(Ulp...)
"Sooo," I said again, grinning to cover the bobbing of my Adam's Apple..."what does that mean?"

"I'm going to have to put you on the waiting list for a hearing aid," he said, as I aged a couple of decades quietly, the grin getting tighter.
"It'll take about three or four months to get one," he explained, "and I don't want to see you again in three months and then have to tell you it's another three months before we can get you some help on this.
"A hearing...right," I said. "Yes...yes, of course, that makes sense..."
(Ulp).
"I'll keep taking the steroids, though, right?" I asked. "I mean...y'never know..."
He nodded. "Miracles," he said. "But yes, we'll watch you closely. It might come back on its own. And if it doesn't, then the hearing aid can go to someone else. Really though, the steroids would have been effective in the first week after you lost your hearing, not eight weeks down the line..."
My mouth set in something of a firm line of its own.
"Yyyyyeah, I have a question about that," I said. "I presented this to my GP after three days, the first chance I could get an appointment. They told me Ear, Nose and Throat wouldn't touch me for six weeks, cos people got better from this on their own. In fact, I went back about four or five times over the space of a few weeks, and was told the same thing every time. One of them even told me if he had a pound for everyone who came in with this condition, he'd be a rich man..."
I paused - breath seemed like a necessity.
"Now you tell me that if I'd been given a treatment on my first or second or even third presentation with this, I might not now be facing the prospect of having to wear a hearing aid. How does that work?"

"You have every right to fel aggreived," he said, seeming not a little horrified at my GPs.
"Can I quote you on that?" I asked, a flame of fury lighting in my brain, and a journalistic instinct kicking in.
"Of course, yes," he agreed.

So - In today's column of Groovy Peeps, we put: Nice Consultant.
In today's colum of Dicks, on the other hand, we put: about four different GPs at my surgery.

I announced the news to my friends on Facebook. Most of them, I'm delighted to say, ripped the piss absolutely mercilessly. Step right this way, pals o'mine, right into this nice enclosure of Groovy Peeps...sure, yeah, hang out with Consultant Boy, it's not like he's busy or anything.

Then some dude with whom I've been having spirited debates on philosphy for a couple of years in a closed group popped up, and made a snarky comment, to the effect that my GPs were practicing my own kind of skepticism back at me. It kinda sat on the atmostphere of the thread - most of which cheered me up enormously - so I deleted the comment, and emailed him to tell him why I'd done so.

He deleted me, and as we speak is trying to get me democratically booted from the group.

Dude, seriously, come this way, got some GPS you might like to meet...

As for me - I have a meeting with the Practice Manager a week tomorrow, and have checked with the Community Health Council, which seems to be encouraging me to make a formal complaint. Might have to - apart from waiting 3-4 months, the NHS hearing aids have the style and sophistication of a 1972 Nissan Sunny, whereas the private sector (and yes, I know about the irony of this coming from Red Tone the Socialist, but socialised medicine's rather let me down on this occasion!) are all sleek and sexy and made by Lotus and Jaguar on a good day...which is why they cost around two grand a pop...If the Dicks will just keep me in sexy hearing aids as a result of their fuck-uppery, that'd be fab. Also, if they could stop misdiagnosing the FUCK out of people and letting them go deaf...that'd be kinda nice too...

Going downstairs for...well, technically lunch, I suppose, now...Catch you chickadeess tomorrow for weigh-in day!

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