Injurious Ageing:

My body and I are getting older – but thankfully together. Unthankfully, I have injured my bicep, my hamstring and my medial calf muscle all in the space of a few days. Only the calf was long term and that is healing, thank god for that, otherwise I would be stumbling, shuffling and walking like an handicapped invalid for the rest of my days. I also have appointments with the cardiologist and the colo-rectal consultant. That’s a lot of things wrong with me at the same time. Is this going to get unstoppably worse? Surely not.

St. Peters hospital is surely an inauspicious name. Waiting for him at the pearly gates isn’t my idea of a holiday or even a nice day out.

Recently I have even had my appendix out but I didn’t die from that, nor from the surgery. Modern medicine is a wonderful thing: no clenching on sticks between my teeth, nor the need for downing a bottle of brandy before the operation: I leave the drinking to my day’s off.

It makes you think though: the logistics of modern medicine must be mind-boggling. The NHS is the largest employer in Britain and we are still running out of workers for it. How do they even work out the timesheets/the agendas/the allocation of scalpels.

What happened before the advent of computers; those folk who make sure it runs smoothly and the confidentiality and consent scripts signed? It leads to ever more complexity: many more porters running around, saws by the bedside and leeches being bred in jars – whole districts must have been full of it. I am wondering what with the modernisation of the world, when we’ll have a ‘Star Trek’ level of technology in the NHS. Maybe they won’t have the budget. They already have cardboard funnels you can wee in and temperature measurers that work just by pointing at your forehead and pressing a button. Private medicine then is the next big thing. I want to be cured of everything, just by a small tube with a flashing light.