The good thing about the NHS is that if you push the right buttons, you get a VIP seat in secondary care within 2 weeks.
Of course you may have to sign away some consent to something. It's bound to mention mortality and follow it with a dotted line.
I always thought it was a flat, straightish line that followed mortality. But no..it's dotted.
For my procedure, the mortality was pleasingly low. Not low enough. But low.
But you have to pay it some due thought, don't you? That's what it is there for.
Sod's Law being what it is.
The 1 in 15,000 that it affects gets an experience that is 1:1.
Full..as it were... On.
Lies, damned lies, statistics. But true lies, nevertheless.
I knew I had written a will.
I knew it would be found in the event of my death, either from the procedure or its findings.
And I allowed myself a few moments to recall the contents of it, and let the irony of the fact that there are names in it that would have no interest in contacting me in life. I possibly allowed myself a sigh at that point.
But looking on the bright side, at least they would be informed of my death so they wouldn't need to worry about their poor behaviour anymore.
As if! I'd speculatively re-contacted two of my oldest 'friends' in the same month, as I allowed such issues of mortality to play upon me, and the action had played out to familiar, predictable silence.
I was told the procedure was uncomfortable but straightforward.
I would be able to go home immediately afterwards. I would be given a piece of paper authorising 'activities as normal', and those of us on the dole should go home and watch any "straight-to-Channel 5" movie being screened.
Being screened.
I have to report though that as I lay naked from the waist down gripping the stainless steel and dancing to command for a roomful of uniformed women (not for the first time), it actually was somewhat painful.
It definitely graduated from the discomfort advertised, to actual pain because I remember making a mental note of it. On several occasions. I definitely thought at some point, this is worse than the dentist's drill.
Now I pride myself on being a hard man. A 'hardo', as we said at school. Looks so wrong now.
I prefer to go without anaesthetic.(Not that they were pushing it)
I like the idea of the people operating on me to join me in a few sibilant choruses of "what a brave little soldier he is!".
Call it vanity if you want. But really it's about not being any trouble to anyone.
And because I could see my pulse rate (and waveform), I could see it didn't rise.
The sympathetic nervous system demands that your pulse and blood pressure rise with pain. But mine didn't.
But I suspected as much.
I don't respond to any sort of pressure, to any sort of argument with a rise in my pulse.
I don't do things in that way.
Never have.
I've always known it.
I compartmentalise, deconstruct and reconstruct. I haven't spent 25 years in an orange cassock at the top of the Tibetan mountain, saving on the cost of Vosene for nothing.
I was thinking about this as the telescope approached my right eyeball.
You can't get a rise out of me, I thought.
Maybe that's what 'a rise' means.A rise in the pulse... What say you Google?
Oh well...apparently the expression alludes to the angler dangling his bait in the hope that the fish will rise. I think I prefer my own updated 'origins story'.
I pursed my lips a little, and did some regular panting, similar to a soon-to-be-unpregnant woman who is pretending that delivering a baby causes horrible pain.
While this has been claimed, it has been dismissed by research. Nobody has managed to find any other situation where people volunteer so readily for the same so-called "pain" again and again so easily. It therefore fails the repeatability test so vital in all research.
That childbirth is actually painful has thus been largely discredited. In fact, the evidence base suggests quite the reverse. Early work on the attention-seeking hypothesis is showing promising results.
My very real pain on the other hand continued intermittently for an hour or two.
I couldn't stay in the car park forever. I did the drive, grateful for the automatic shift as my gear-free hand went unconsciously to 'rub-it-better' position.
At home I could have a lie down. So it was an unwelcome telephone call 15 minutes later that started asking me about my accident in my previous career in industry.
The one I've never had.
In the job I've never had.
But that is modern life in England, isn't it?
We don't have a castle with a duvet anymore.
We have advertising space.
Of course you may have to sign away some consent to something. It's bound to mention mortality and follow it with a dotted line.
I always thought it was a flat, straightish line that followed mortality. But no..it's dotted.
For my procedure, the mortality was pleasingly low. Not low enough. But low.
But you have to pay it some due thought, don't you? That's what it is there for.
Sod's Law being what it is.
The 1 in 15,000 that it affects gets an experience that is 1:1.
Full..as it were... On.
Lies, damned lies, statistics. But true lies, nevertheless.
I knew I had written a will.
I knew it would be found in the event of my death, either from the procedure or its findings.
And I allowed myself a few moments to recall the contents of it, and let the irony of the fact that there are names in it that would have no interest in contacting me in life. I possibly allowed myself a sigh at that point.
But looking on the bright side, at least they would be informed of my death so they wouldn't need to worry about their poor behaviour anymore.
As if! I'd speculatively re-contacted two of my oldest 'friends' in the same month, as I allowed such issues of mortality to play upon me, and the action had played out to familiar, predictable silence.
I was told the procedure was uncomfortable but straightforward.
I would be able to go home immediately afterwards. I would be given a piece of paper authorising 'activities as normal', and those of us on the dole should go home and watch any "straight-to-Channel 5" movie being screened.
Being screened.
I have to report though that as I lay naked from the waist down gripping the stainless steel and dancing to command for a roomful of uniformed women (not for the first time), it actually was somewhat painful.
It definitely graduated from the discomfort advertised, to actual pain because I remember making a mental note of it. On several occasions. I definitely thought at some point, this is worse than the dentist's drill.
Now I pride myself on being a hard man. A 'hardo', as we said at school. Looks so wrong now.
I prefer to go without anaesthetic.(Not that they were pushing it)
I like the idea of the people operating on me to join me in a few sibilant choruses of "what a brave little soldier he is!".
Call it vanity if you want. But really it's about not being any trouble to anyone.
And because I could see my pulse rate (and waveform), I could see it didn't rise.
The sympathetic nervous system demands that your pulse and blood pressure rise with pain. But mine didn't.
But I suspected as much.
I don't respond to any sort of pressure, to any sort of argument with a rise in my pulse.
I don't do things in that way.
Never have.
I've always known it.
I compartmentalise, deconstruct and reconstruct. I haven't spent 25 years in an orange cassock at the top of the Tibetan mountain, saving on the cost of Vosene for nothing.
I was thinking about this as the telescope approached my right eyeball.
You can't get a rise out of me, I thought.
Maybe that's what 'a rise' means.A rise in the pulse... What say you Google?
Oh well...apparently the expression alludes to the angler dangling his bait in the hope that the fish will rise. I think I prefer my own updated 'origins story'.
I pursed my lips a little, and did some regular panting, similar to a soon-to-be-unpregnant woman who is pretending that delivering a baby causes horrible pain.
While this has been claimed, it has been dismissed by research. Nobody has managed to find any other situation where people volunteer so readily for the same so-called "pain" again and again so easily. It therefore fails the repeatability test so vital in all research.
That childbirth is actually painful has thus been largely discredited. In fact, the evidence base suggests quite the reverse. Early work on the attention-seeking hypothesis is showing promising results.
My very real pain on the other hand continued intermittently for an hour or two.
I couldn't stay in the car park forever. I did the drive, grateful for the automatic shift as my gear-free hand went unconsciously to 'rub-it-better' position.
At home I could have a lie down. So it was an unwelcome telephone call 15 minutes later that started asking me about my accident in my previous career in industry.
The one I've never had.
In the job I've never had.
But that is modern life in England, isn't it?
We don't have a castle with a duvet anymore.
We have advertising space.
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