no more

[baratron]

And just in case I didn't have enough to deal with: fucking Kingston Hospital has lost the result of my fucking latex allergy test, and wants me to make an appointment for a new one.

Earliest appointment they can offer me even after I explained that I need the result before I can have the operation is... 3rd October. Which means I won't have the result for my pre-op on 6th October. Initially they offered me an appointment in November, and I'm still shaking all over from the thought of having to live with this gall bladder for another month.

I don't even need to see a doctor - they won't do allergy tests on me by skin-prick anymore, due to possible risk of death. All I need is to go in and have someone take some blood from me and send it off to the lab. Why the fuck do I have to wait a month to have that done?

I'm crying and hyperventilating and almost throwing up here from the stress.

Comments

[meirion.livejournal.com]

can't you get a nurse at your GP's to draw the blood and send it off to the lab for testing? or is that breaking some rule of bureaucracy in the brave new nhs of which i am currently unaware?

-m-

[baratron.livejournal.com]

I don't know about the bureaucracy (although Kingston Primary Healthcare Trust in general seems to be drowning under it at the best of times. My favourite bit is the fact that to get a GP appointment, you need to get up at the crack of dawn on the day you want one and spend half an hour sitting in a queue on the phone. This is the thing that Tony Blair expressed great surprise about when questioned on it by the public, and tried to weasel out of by suggesting the questioner must be mistaken. When the person running the questions (Newsnight?) got members of the audience to put up their hands if they'd had a similar experience, TB then tried to weasel out of it by suggesting lots of doctor's surgeries had misunderstood the government's recommendation).

I am vaguely aware from previous incidents that there are some blood tests that must be done at the hospital, because the blood needs to be processed immediately, or something. I assume this must be one of them.

Nonetheless, it takes a phlebotomist approximately 30 seconds to remove a small vial's worth of blood from a patient. I'm not sure why I need to wait n months for this to happen.