The latest development

UPDATE ON JOE

After a few weeks of not hearing anything from the hospital, we received three appointments. One for a pre-op assessment/consultation, another for a CT scan, and finally a day patient procedure to remove a stent and tidy up his nephrostomy tubing. My opinion was that a consultation and/or the scan would reveal other things that needed to be done.

It just shows how things can change.

Three days ago Joe was full of pain in the nether region. My advice was to see the local HP but Joe decided to ride the pain and wait until he saw the consultant in a couple of weeks’ time. The next day he was still adamant he wanted to wait. But on Saturday I ignored him and rang the doc’s surgery to get an emergency number, since the surgery hadn’t yet opened for business.

The emergency service is known here as the Badger Group, which is an out of hours health service and as I discovered is simply marvellous. Here’s an extract from their website:

For over 15 years, the Birmingham and District General Practitioner Emergency Rooms group (Badger) has been delivering high quality, out-of-hours primary healthcare to local patients. 

Badger was established in 1996 by GPs who joined together to provide an improved out-of-hours service to their patients. Since then, Badger's trusted service has grown substantially and is now the leading out-of-hours service in Birmingham employing nearly 500 clinical and operational personnel, servicing contracted PCTs and 234 general practitioners with a patient base of over 1.5 million. 

Renowned for its extensive experience and quality care, Badger has built up a prestigious reputation which is well respected throughout Birmingham, Walsall and South Staffordshire and known across the nation. 

Badger's vision is to be the preferred provider of innovative and responsive health and social care to the UK public sector. We are a people business and therefore we put people first, we are passionate about helping you save money, hassle and time. Our aim depends on transparency in our dealings with service users, commissioners and employees.’ 

I only heard about it last week… strange how things turn out, isn’t it?

Lady Doctor, called Barbara, had one of those jolly personalities that puts people at ease, and she was really skilled. After giving Joe a thorough examination she said she thought the bladder was full and that was the cause of the pain since there was no escape for the urine. And we thought the urine was going across to the nephrostomy bag! Obviously there is still a lot to do on Joe’s innards!!

Barbara immediately sent us to hospital with a covering letter which meant he was admitted straight to the ward. No messing! It turned out that Barbara was right in her assessment.

A doctor at the hospital tried and failed several times to fit a catheter but it wouldn’t work, and poor Joe was in agony while this was going on. However, he has since had another operation to fit another nephrostomy bag on the other side. Greedy man now has two but at least he’s got rid of that terrible pain. It was heart-breaking to see him hurting so much. I wish I could give him a medal for bravery.

So this is why I’m a bit tardy about blogging… I’ll try to get back to it a.s.a.p.