Apologies for the navel gazing but my grandmother is currently in hospital following hip replacement surgery. The surgery was a complete success and although the trauma and sedation knocked her for six for a bit she is back on fine form and making a full recovery.
The elective surgery centre where she is having treatment is something of an experimental idea. Rather then following the traditional treatment model of having a hospital with a number of different surgical wards all competing for time in the same general operating theatres this centre does two things and two things only; hip replacements and knee replacements. To do this they've split the process into four distinct sections; pre-op, theatre, post-op and rehabilitation wards. The path of a patient between these four areas is normally pretty well established. Into pre-op at 11am, into theatre at 1pm, into post-op at around 7pm and the onto the rehabilitation ward for bullying by physiotherapists by mid-day the following day.
My dad described it as something of a production line but the image it brought to my mind was that of a F1 pit stop. They wheel them in, stick a tube in their side, whip the worn joint off, stick a fresh one on and away they go. I bet if you ask nicely a nurse will even lean in and wipe your face with a damp cloth.
Before my grandmother went into theatre I decided that I wouldn't be visiting her in the post-op unit. Not out of laziness but after the week she had I thought she needed a good day or so of sleep more then she needed me poking her in the ribs offering her grapes. For some reason they kept her in post-op until Tuesday so I did get to go and have a look at it before she was moved down.
I wasn't actually allowed to visit her on Tuesday because I had to sit around in an empty house waiting for a delivery that never arrived. Now it's Wednesday and everybody's angry at me I can only presume that people thought I would use my time yesterday to blog all about my thoughts and opinions on this new approach to health care. I can't imagine how anybody got into that mindset because I've made it perfectly clear on a number of occasions that I consider the British government to be very bad debtors and I've been forced to cut off their line of credit until such a time as they start making repayments on the balance of their account. It was interesting to notice though that one of my freebies from before the declaration of war has already been implemented far in advance of 2012.
The marked improvement in my grandmothers condition has however left me feeling just a little bit charitable so I will be prepared to offer the government some advice on how to approach the Bristol Abuse Case. Their current sticking point on this issues appears to be the belief that people who consider themselves to be citizens of a democracy won't stand for any moves to end the violence.
The answer to this is quite simple. All they need to do is to stop pretending that the current situation is a naturally occurring part of a free society. Instead they tell the truth and admit it a carefully planned construct of military intelligence. By voluntarily signing up to be part of the military the main protagonist, like so many others, signed away her rights to be governed by the rules and social norms of a democratic, civilian society. This shouldn't be too hard for them because they've been using that reasoning to justify their behaviour towards me even though they're yet to show exactly where I signed up for service.
In case anyone is still labouring under the belief that the BAC was constructed to promote a political message can I just refer them to the UK's Eurovison Song contest entry from the spring of the following year http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=NBOnDcmckdc where a slightly camp group went to Europe and sang, "We're flying the flag for you!". Incidentally with only 19 points they ending up coming 22nd out of 24, hardly a gold medal winning performance.
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