NHS Choices?

Get out or she dies. Choice ?

11 am Sunday morning. She’s not bleeding, she’s not broken, she’s not crying.

But we are in the local Out-of-Hours Walk-In Centre after an hour or so on two out-of-hours buses … in the pouring rain.

Fortunately, we’re early enough to miss the Saturday night casualties of drunken domestic violence and nightclub brawls – instead our company is concerned Muslim mums with, like us, sick kids.

“See your GP tomorrow”.

“Look at this”. We tender the doctors’ report from here. “Oh … now would you prefer the A & E down the road?”

“No – we want to see a doctor”.

“Which one do you want to see?”

“Any fucking one!”

“Well, at the moment, there is only one … ok … just take a seat …”

… “ok, we’d like to take her up to Paediatrics (you know it’s closing soon?) to see the doctor there but, of course, if you want to go, at your own cost, to Paediatrics 20 miles away and which has a far better reputation than our own … of course, if she dies on the way …”

“Let us see a fucking doctor!”

…

“Hmm … I think she needs a blood test. We can do it tomorrow when the lab is open or we can send it over to the hospital 20 miles away and get the result later on .Which would you prefer?”.

Meanwhile, Dr Fuckwit sees the word Africa and we are in isolation because we may have Ebola …

The result returns.

“We think your daughter has leukaemia … now then, which Centre of Excellence would you like to attend?”

Thank your Deity it was not like that. Thank you NHS nurses and doctors for taking decisions for us – because that is what you are paid to do!