My PICC and “Trache” lines are now obsolete and removed, as is my “yellow card” (potentially a Golden Staph-ish warning), which means that things are now easier all around and I look less like a medical experiment.
On the topic of people in general, I’ve (big surprise) met even more impressive people for my expanding “excello-person” collection, but I’ve also noticed a kind of gross education deficiency in Australian males (haven’t tried checking female training on this, and don’t expect to): after 20, 30 or in some cases more than 40 years, many of them/us still aren’t able to competently manage standing before the porcelain “throne” with any obvious sign of recognisable skill. Not even many of the visually healthy and steady ones.
Igniting or releasing intoxicants and/or pushing control buttons to make rabid video sprites disappear is apparently easy, hitting a steady hole bigger than your backside at a range of a dozen centimetres is apparently not a meaningful part of the training.
A friend of mine visited “my” ward on Thursday, and after hearing some of the stress that practically all nurses endure constantly, claimed that a job “shovelling pooh would be better”. I broke it to him that nursing often encompasses this and similar chores, without (m)any options regarding working materials, storage or tools (if any are offered). From the look which then appeared on the lad’s face, this was apparently a fairly, um, earth-shaking revelation.
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The general situation of so many enthusiastic and competently dedicated staff in a relatively excellent set of hospitals tells me that the money being spent on health in Australia is, in general, arriving in other budgets. This is literally a shame because although this is not exactly a completely happy universe (else why do we need medical services at all, for example?) but these people are in general well-educated and informed, and above all deeply motivated to produce worthwhile results despite the many obstacles they face. That seriously deserves better support, and it took my own direct involvement to draw me to begin understanding how much better we should respond to this care, knowledge and patience (whether patients or not!).