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I’ve been thinking off and on about my blog and never managed to actually find the energy to actually login. Lo and behold it has been 2years since I last posted something.

Anything exciting in my life? Not really. I’m still working for the same company, it has been 5 years already since I joined them. I like them, but I’m not deeply devoted to them. I believe I have managed to maintain a healthy distance, emotion-wise.

Still married, still have the wonder kitty Flippie in my life.

But the biggest thing that has remained the same is my ongoing battle to get decent healthcare from the twats that I have to deal with (GP, Practice Nurses, District Nurses, Labs, Surgeons). Today was no exception.

I have been suffering from a rather nasty UTI and the general approach here in the UK is for the GP to immediately prescribe some antibiotics and hope the infection goes away for the patient. Just to be clear, antibiotics are not interchangeable – they each handle particular bacterias quite nicely and each have their own side effects. Me, being a well informed patient, I know that to properly treat any infection – whether viral or bacterial – you need to test a sample. So that means I won’t accept a script until I know the urine has been tested and lab indicates which antibiotic is suitable. Sadly the lackwits here cannot be bothered to test properly.

Each time the lab report says “mixed growth”. Part of the reason for this is that because I have a neo-bladder there will always be some form of mixed growth. Which means that the lab needs to perform a more detailed testing. Which they don’t (I’m looking at you Basingstoke Hospital) what they have managed to do over the past 2years is either lose my samples OR just perform a preliminary test and not go further. Each and every single time I beg the GP to tell the lab to run a more comprehensive test and each and every single time the GP twit doesn’t. So the lab doesn’t test properly – either they are incompetent and don’t know what they are doing or, which I think is more likely, they are incredibly lazy.

My consultant (UK name for a specialist surgeon) sent a letter to the GP saying that they are to request an “extended culture” and to leave my sample in the GP fridge until it is time to collect the sample, so that the bacterial growth is slowed down and sample is more “clean”. What do I hear from the Practice Nurse – no, cannot put it in the fridge, it’s against Practice Policy. I flash the detailed text message from the GP with instructions from the urologist. Somehow this teeny tiny uppity woman who pretends she’s a Practice Nurse believes she has more say than both a GP AND a urologist. I wanted to yell “JUST DO IT WOMAN”.

And the GP receptionist was worse than a snail, speed she was going at. It took her 15 minutes to print out the lab request form. And it took another 15 minutes with back & forth with the Practice Nurse. For a urine sample – which should take at most 5 minutes – I spent about 40 minutes.