Two Blue Plaques In Cable Street
I generally note the blue plaques I pass, as I walk around. This morning, I was on the way to pick something up in the area and passed two.
The Angel Of Cable Street
Hannah Billig seems to have been a remarkable doctor. But then she was awarded a George Medal for courage and bravery in the Blitz and she was called the Angel of Cable Street.
Jack Kid Berg
This plaque to Jack Kid Berg was a hundred metres or so further on. He seemed to have had an good and long life.
I also seem to remember that along with Ted Kid Lewis he was one of my father’s sporting heroes.
Towards The Paperless Society
On the BBC’s News web site today, these are two of their top ten stories; the scrapping of the car tax disc and driving licence records going on-line.
Obviously, these don’t affect me as I don’t have a driving licence or own a car.
But they do show the way that society is going. After all, for many of us, the only contact with our bank or credit card provider is through the Internet.
The one area, where we don’t seem to be going on-line and paperless is healthcare.
The two stories today claim that this paperless route may save us money on car insurance.
So why is healthcare not following the same route?
It doesn’t necessarily mean a loss of privacy and the need to carry a health card, as we do when we travel in Europe, so I’d put it down to a lack of vision of those who run healthcare and the NHS in particular.
How Many Times Do You Go To A & E In A Year?
This story on the BBC’s web site has done a bit of research and here’s the first part.
Some patients are going to A&E units in the UK more than 50 times a year, a BBC investigation shows.
Data from 183 sites obtained under the Freedom of Information Act revealed nearly 12,000 people made more than 10 visits to the same unit in 2012-13.
A small number of those – just over 150 – attended more than 50 times.
I wonder why they needed a Freedom of Information request to get all this information. This sort of information should be shown on the NHS web site, suitably anonimised.
I didn’t go in 2011. but I went once in 2012 and 2013. Last year’s visit was when I damaged my hand and it just wouldn’t stop bleeding.
Surely, if the NHS had a decent joined-up computer system, they could deal with their serial patients better. I am joined up to UCLH, where I went for my hand, as I had been an in-patient and that got me through the hospital a lot quicker.
Do People Prefer A Terrible Local Hospital?
This article from the Express and Star illustrates the problems of reforming local health services.
The problems that existed at Stafford Hospital have been well documented. This report from the BBC is typical of many I’ve seen.
One of the problems with hospitals with bad reputations either in the media or amongst medical professionals, is that no staff will move there, as they want to protect their professional reputation. There is a story about this from the Stoke Sentinel.
But those that want to keep Stafford Hospital going, have no right to use some of the abuse they have against Julie Bailey, who fought valiantly to expose the scandal of poor healthcare at the hospital. It’s probably lucky for Ms. Bailey, that she appears to be white. I suppose that is lucky for her abusers, as otherwise some of the language used would have probably involved a reference to the police.
Coeliacs And Health
I was reading a comment on this post when I had a thought.
Are coeliacs a rather unique health grouping?
Is there another disease, where most diagnosed sufferers eat so healthily?
I suspect too, that if you look at a database of coeliacs, that the level of smoking and drinking is lower than the general population, But I also suspect that applies to a lot of serious diseases like cancer, stroke and heart problems.
There are other factors that come into it too. I see the practice nurse every three months for a B12 injection. I hope they might spot something like a mole turning cancerous. But they always go through a simple how are you routine, whilst performing the procedure.
So analysing a database of coeliacs, you might find the results skewed because of a high proportion of healthy eaters, non-smokers and light drinkers, who see a healthcare professional regularly.
After all, it has been shown for example, that diagnosed coeliacs, who stick to their gluten-free diet have lower levels of cancer than the general population.
Is The NHS A Religion?
David Prior set the cat among the pigeons with his article in the Daily Telegraph, which was entitled, NHS on brink of crisis because it became ‘too powerful’ to criticise. It’s all reported here on the BBC, with this being the opening shot.
The NHS “became too powerful to criticise” despite many patients receiving a “wholly unsatisfactory” service, the health regulator has said.
David Prior told the Daily Telegraph that even the most senior staff were afraid of speaking out.
The Care Quality Commission chairman said the NHS should not be treated as a “national religion” beyond criticism.
You have two camps and I meet both amongst my friends.
One group trust it totally for everything and the others pay for expensive health insurance and except for their GP don’t go near the organisation.
I’m in another category. I don’t have health insurance, but if say I needed surgery immediately, I’d probably pay for itself myself. I would also make sure, I went to the best quack I could find.
I would not have any quick solutions, except that the first thing we must do is to decouple the NHS from national politics. Some NHS Trusts are big enough to be companies, that would be in the FTSE300. So politicians and the great and good, should have nothing to do with them!
Because we let politicians meddle we get some of the disasters we’ve had in the past few years.
I would do a few things to make it better for everybody.
My GP and his team are in my opinion pretty good and up-to-date and work out of well-equipped modern premises. I would make absolutely sure that all GPs were up to scratch and some of the dreadful ones that I know exist should be given marching orders.
Perhaps making it easier to change GPs would help. It’s quite easy here in London, but if you have only one terrible rural practice and don’t drive, what do you do.
We also need a universal health database, that all doctors, hospitals and patients can access.
But we as patients have responsibilities.
If we are overweight, smoke and drink heavily can we rightly affect a First Class service? Suppose you had an expensive car and constantly put dents in it because of bad driving, would you expect your insurance company to pay for the repairs? Probably not! So why should your body be treated any different?
And then there’s the insistence of many, that they want the best treatment from their local hospital and if they need a difficult procedure, they refuse to travel to the next area, to get the best specialist.
Try and close an A & E unit and see what happens. Some years ago, there was a big fuss when the unit at Newmarket was closed. But what happens now? The paramedics get patients to either Addenbrookes or the West Suffolk and you never hear of any complaints now!
Patients if asked, would probably say they needed an Air Ambulance at their local hospital, but we seem to work well with a limited number.
We need better systems that work for all! Not Rolls Royce systems working at a low level, which may well be what some countries have!
The NHS has responsibilities too!
It should have a complaints system that works, so that problems such as we’ve seen in the last year or so are spotted earlier. We have the successful CHIRP system for flying and shipping, So where is the NHS version?
As NHS Trusts are in fact large public companies, with just one shareholder, they should be run as such, responsibly, ethically and to proper financial rules and standards. And just as companies like Blockbuster, Peacocks and Jessops went bust, they should be allowed to fail.
And when they do fail, we get the unedifying spectacle of those who’d criticised say the bad care from their local hospital, fighting to keep it open. They should have started kicking earlier, so that the problems were solved years before.
I used to live near Chase Farm Hospital and my younger sister was actually born there. In the 1950s it was a dreadful hospital and everybody who could, went to London, as the other hospitals in the area weren’t much better. When I read reports of the hospital now, it doesn’t seemed to have improved much. But still the locals fight to keep it open, rather than improve the care in the area.
Should not in London the hospitals in a particular borough be controlled by the local council? London has a wonderful transport system and one of the reasons is that transport is the direct responsibility of the Mayor and they either get it right or voted out.
I can’t think of a reason, why each local authority, shouldn’t control, at least the major hospital in its area. Quality and performance would of course be monitored centrally.
More On Feeling Better
I posted after the Home Run From Bilbao, that I was feeling better.
Last night, I went to Pizza Express for a pizza and the Aspall cider tasted good, whereas one a few months ago, tasted rather horrible.
I trimmed my beard this morning too, and that now feels to have a lot more body and substance.
But perhaps the biggest change is that over the last few months, I’ve found that I was rather unsteady some times when I got up from a hard chair. I haven’t had an incident of that nature since Biarritz.
I Think My Bilbao Trip Did Me Good
Yesterday, I had lunch with an old friend, S. She thought that I might have got the old twinkle back in my eye.
But there have been various changes I’ve noticed since my return.
The major one is that my body seems to have gone much closer to like it was, before I had the stroke three and a half years ago. My fitness trainer came round on Monday and she got me to do stretches that I have found impossible in the last few years. I could actually put my left arm up my back and my right arm over my left shoulder and touch hands. Which is something, I probably haven’t done since 2009. In this area, I’ve also noticed that I can fold my arms in front of my chest. And both ways to boot!
I walked today to the Regent’s Canal and my feet behaved themselves with only a touch of the pain doctors say is arthritis, that has been with me since the 1960s and at times has been bad in the last ten years.
I also had two glasses of wine with S. And both of them tasted like wine. For the last few years, a lot of wine could have been anything, as it was tasteless. The only thing, that seemed to have taste, was the Waitrose lemonade, that I use virtually as a mouthwash.
I certainly tasted the chilli-enriched shepherd’s pie tonight.
Even my nose doesn’t seem to running so much and certainly the dull pain in my lower jaw and teeth has lessened. My nose hasn’t bled either!
My brain seems to be on top form, and I’m fairly certain, that the mean time, it takes me to solve the Super Fiendish sudokus in The Times has decreased. My short term memory seems better too!
I can now wear my watch on my left hand and even doing up shirt buttons is easier. I suspect the latter might be a clue, as men do up shirt buttons with just their right hand, and mine wasn’t affected by the stroke. But I have found buttons difficult for the last three years.
Also, since I arrived in Biarritz, I have found taking my INR a lot easier and much less messy. Could it be that my skin has absorbed a lot of water and now it is much more normal. It certainly feels a lot less dry. The only thing I put on my hands are water, soap and gloves. Moisturisers are for wimps. And on the subject of my hands, I can now cut all my nails myself a lot more easily!
Can all of this be down to the mild, sunny, humid weather I encountered on my trip to and from Bilbao? I had in fact, first noticed the return of the arm crossing ability, when I was lying in bed in the hotel in Bordeaux.
To try to recreate that lovely atmosphere, I’ve had my humidifier on full since I returned and a hire company is delivering a bigger one tomorrow!
I intend to prolong this good feeling.
Would I Go Back To Biarritz Again?
Of course I would!
Especially, if I could be guaranteed some weather like I had just experienced. The temperature had been about 14 °C with a humidity of over 50%
I do wonder about my father’s health. He suffered from a similar catarrh to that I’ve suffered for the last couple of years and he had lots of skin problems. He always put the latter down to the solvents he used in his printing business. I’m pretty certain he was a coeliac too, as I must have got the genes from somewhere.
I also remember him saying once that he had been to Biarritz. So did he go because he felt healthy there, as I just had?
I don’t know and there’s no-one I can ask who knew him, who’s still alive.
But as I seem to feel better in Biarritz, if I think I need a break in the winter, I think I’ll go.
Trains seem to take between five and six hours from Paris and there seems to be at least one train every hour.
Exploring Bilbao
Bilbao is an easy city to walk around, although there are virtually no maps, except rudimentary ones at Metro stations.
As you can see the weather was good and I found it helped my health, as it was mild and humid.
Bilbao also seemed to have a lot of clocks, most of which were working and showing the correct time. As Liverpool is the same, is this due to the connection with the sea?
The Anonymous Widower 