I will have blood

I am in blood
Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more,
Returning were as tedious as go o'er.

Macbeth

Next time I need a blood test, remind me to stab myself over a Tupperware bowl and convey said container of my vital fluid direct to the lab. Little did I realise how much life could be expended in the simple taking of a test. More fool me for reporting to my GP not only with protracted nausea but also a crook knee. Nausea is of course a notoriously vague condition, a symptom of practically any illness, a side effect of any number of medications, a by-product of a heat-oppressed brain as well as a reaction to a disagreeable food. So first things first: get a blood test to rule out a few potential suspects. And why not, while at the hospital, get an x-ray too, of the aforesaid crook knee? What could be simpler? Hah.

I arrived at the hospital promptly at 9am to find the waiting room already almost full. Pouting, I took my ticket, and was not best pleased to find some 40 people ahead of me. However I consulted the ineffectual guide that is experience, and told myself that in former times the wait was never too intolerable, and with a team of three bloodletters (as was usually the case) it should not take too long to whittle down the queue. Hah. Someone sitting near me grumbled that they’d been in yesterday, and it was even worse, so they gave up and came back today. It was mystifying that the few people called in to the bleeding room stayed there for an age. How long does it take to prick an arm? Were patients being bled to death? Were bodysnatchers at work?

Equipped with at least a modicum of foresight, I had brought with me Dickens’ Dombey and Son, and so was able to immerse myself in the domestic travails of Florence and Edith. With most unfortunate timing, however, Mr Dickens opted to conduct the reader into a digressive indictment of the manifold ills of human society. I had little stomach to swallow the metaphor of the “poisoned fountains that flow into our hospitals and lazar-houses,” and so I put down my book and sank deeper into my chair.

Time ticked along with its usual brazen indifference, and still the flow of patients was more a turgid sewer than the required steady stream. The interminable wait reminded me of an airport departure lounge – but at least when one knows one has nothing to do but sit and fester for six hours before boarding a plane, one can hibernate a little. Here, with no indication as to the cause of the prodigious delay, one was left to entertain all manner of unhelpful meditations on the arbitrary waste of endeavour. Had I not been heartsick when I stepped into that place, I assuredly was when I left.

Some two and a half hours elapsed before my number came up. How I pitied the elderly couple sitting next to me, who had some fifty or so people ahead of them. In the bleeding room I observed three staff, but two were occupied with other things, and I soon surmised that the creature working the needles was being trained (poorly). Given that the blood was thundering through my angry veins, I was taken aback at the slowness with which he managed to extract a single sample. Even so, the procedure could not have lasted more than two minutes, which left me all the more befuddled at how it was taking an average of four minutes per patient. Far be it from me to tell halfwits how to do their jobs, but surely it wouldn’t have stretched the other two staff too sorely to help out with the odd bleeder, just to reduce the abominable delay by a fraction?

After such a wait I knew I would be satisfied with nothing less than a diagnosis of haemorrhagic fever. Detesting all humanity, I prowled the corridors to radiology. The waiting room was neither as large nor as full as that for blood. I took a seat and observed the receptionist examining her split ends. The exactness and attention with which she did so augured well, I hoped, for the competence of the medical staff. Hah.

Forgive my unkindness, but the first radiologist to show its face (and a very greasy face at that) resembled a retarded Dawn French. I was relieved when she did not call my name, and attempted to settle back into Dickens. However the mental stagnation so capably harnessed in all such waiting rooms soon reduced me to nodding my head in weak dismay. There was at least a greater sense of camaraderie among the hostages than in the blood room: one after one people began voicing their dissatisfaction at the protracted delay. Staff would wander through, and chat to each other, oblivious to the seething unease before them. A few people got up to avail themselves of a ‘patient feedback form’ and so alleviated their malaise with a dose of regulated hatred. The folly of an Irishman using his mobile phone in the x-ray department (well d’uh) provided scant relief.

Ninety minutes elapsed before a different receptionist (the other having sloped off to examine her hair in greater detail) apologetically advised us that they were very short-staffed, but that someone from another department would be along shortly to assist. And indeed this welcome auxiliary called my name and escorted me to the big machine. Two x-rays later I was asked to wait once more, while she ascertained whether there were any major complications to my hobbled kneecap. Apparently there were not, as after a mercifully brief pause I was told to see my GP in a week and begone. Never have I left a building with such haste.

As an incentive to steer clear of hospitals at every cost (dying slowly in a pool of one’s own pus now seems preferable) the experience proved a tremendous success.