The Most Embarrassing Thing To Happen To Anyone Ever And It Happened To Me

If there is one thing you learn by being a ‘regular’ patient in hospital, it is to leave your dignity at the door.
If you don’t, every time they have to do something unspeakable to you, you will suffer more than is necessary.
For years, I tried to keep my dignity. Difficult when you’re having a barium enema or a colonoscopy.
It was actually in hospital, that the most embarrassing event of my life - and I would suggest if it happened to anyone else it would qualify as their most embarrassing moment too - occurred when I was just twelve years of age.

I had been out in the magnificent Powerscourt Estate in Enniskerry for the day, with the Blackrock College scout troop.
We had been building a rope bridge over the river.
And big eejit here, volunteered to climb a tree to secure a rope.
The rope was secure all right.
The branch on which I was standing was no such thing.
It snapped. And I fell maybe two metres landing with a thump on my coccyx - that little bit at the base of the spine which, I am told, used to be a tail.
I managed to hike back to the bus with the other boys.
But once I was home, the pain became progressively worse. And so my father drove me to Stephen’s Green, then the site of St Vincent’s Hospital.
We headed for Accident and Emergency - but our path was interrupted by a doctor, known to my father, who redirected us to a private x-ray facility.
My father was less than gruntled. Now he had to pay even though, in those days, there was no waiting in A&E.
I was told to wait in this little cubicle - and after a little while, a female voice called my name.
I emerged to find a pretty woman, aged about 20 or so and dressed in a kind of green overall.
“Patrick Murray? she asked.
I confirmed my identity.
“I will be doing your x-ray. So. We’ll get ready.”
Now, in those days, boys of twelve were actually boys of twelve, not twenty like today. So I had no interest in this woman - other than being slightly embarrassed by having to deal with her in the first place, by having nobody else present and having to make conversation with her.
“Right,” she said after filling in some form or other. “Into the cubicle, take your clothes off and put on this gown. She handed me a blue gown.
It might as well have been Joseph’s coat of many colours.
Because one phrase was rattling ‘round my head.
“Take your clothes off.”
I wanted to die. I wanted to faint. I wanted to go home.
I went into the cubicle, dazed.
I removed my clothes and put on the gown.
“Are you ready?” she called.
I nodded.
“Right. Up on the table and lie on your back first,” she said.
I lay up on the table and she moved the big x-ray above my head.
“Now,” she said. “Open the gown.”
She said “open the gown.”
I couldn’t believe it. Open the gown.
I closed my eyes and opened the gown.
I lay there. Naked as the day I was born.
Me. Twelve years of age. Naked in front of a woman. And a pretty one at that.
I wanted to cry. I wanted it all to go away.
Then I thought I heard a stifled giggle.
I opened my eyes and saw her with a look on her face that suggested she was a) amused b) surprised and c) terribly sorry for me.
“Ah,” she said with a voice that suggested I was a little bit pathetic.
“You could have kept your underpants on.”

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Back In Hospital - But Every Cloud...

You're probably fed up with me writing about being in hospital.
Not, I can guarantee you, as fed up as I am being in hospital.
Fourth time this year.
If you follow this blog, you will know that I have had a Bone Marrow Transplant.
That happened in May.
The reason it happened is because, in January, I had the most awful tumour on my foot - I have a thing called Cutaneous T Cell Lymphoma - and a rare version of it at that - and it was decided, by me, on advice that the transplant was the way to go.
So that was on May 14.
And it was, more or less a breeze.
Now, when you have a serious medical procedure and it is 'more or less a breeze' you should look in the mirror, tell you're self you're a fool and get yourself ready.

Because if it's a breeze it either a) hasn't worked or b) the hurricane is on the way.
And the hurricane was on the way.
100 days after the transplant, I received a thing called DLI - Donor Lymphocyte Infusion. That's when part of the donor's blood is put directly into mine.
The purpose is, partly, to provoke a little bit of rejection. Which it did. Because a little bit of rejection means that the new bone marrow will begin the battle against the old and, hopefully win.
The battle is still raging.
But on top of that, my little daughter Charlotte got the vomiting bug, a 48 hour thing.
And brains trust here decided the best place for her, was in the bed beside me.
That's despite being told to avoid crowded places in case anyone in the crowd has a cold or anything else I might pick up, me with my immune system less mature than my two-year-olds'.
So crowds, I avoided, but the two year old with the bug, I pulled close beside me to comfort her.
And I got her bug.
Hers cleared up in 48 hours, as 48 hour bugs have a tendency to do.
Mine is with me three weeks so far and being viral, has every chance of extending its stay for another three or four.
My doctor doesn't get angry at me often.
But on this occasion, she was seething.
You see, I think she was operating under the illusion that I had a brain.
So here I am, stuck in hospital. Again.
And if there's one good thing about it, it's this.
I have no appetite.
And so I'm not eating the food.
Every cloud, they say...

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It's Going To Be Some Year....

2008 has arrived at last.
I was waiting for it with some excitement and not a little fear.
Because, one way or the other, it's going to be a big, big year for me.
Sometime in the next 12 months, hopefully in the next three or four, I will have a Bone Marrow Transplant.
If it works, I will have the chance to resume a normal life.
If it doesn't, well, if it doesn't it could mean no change.
Or no life.
Obviously, I've asked a lot of questions about this treatment. It's astonishing, really, that medical science has actually come up with a blunderbus to fight certain cancers. As one of my doctors said; 'We have very few golden bullets."
So they kill all the cells. Good and bad.
And that makes the transplantee very, very sick. It means living in an isolation room for weeks. It means not seeing my little daughter Charlotte for six to eight weeks. That will be one of the hardest parts of all.
It means six to twelve months of not feeling very well.
But it could mean a new life.

I hate hospitals. i don't if it's because I have spent so much time in them or if it's just a kind of phobia.
So deciding to do this hasn't been easy.
But one thing made the decision easy.
Charlotte.
Anything that will allow me to spend more time with her, is worth it.
There is, of course, a problem with finding out as much as you can about something like this.
All of what you discover, isn't good.
There are sad stories, stories about people suffering a great deal. There are tragedies.
But I try as hard as I can to concentrate on the stories of hope and the stories of people given back their lives.
Next week, I see my doc and tell her to start making the arrangements.
Although they harvested healthy bone marrow from me some years ago, they will, in the first instance, see if they can find a donor.
That raises the possibility of Graft versus Host disease which can be bad.
But if it all goes to plan, the results could and should be excellent.
Eight weeks without holding my daughter. Eight weeks without a kiss from her.
And even when I see Connie, she will be wearing a surgical mask.
They tell me'll I'll be too sick to care, which, in a perverse kind of way, is good news I suppose.
I hope to keep up the blog while I undergo the transplant and in the subsequent months.
So if you have a mind which is interested in things medical, this is the place for you.
I'm going to need some courage.
And your prayers please.

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I Suspect...

HEALTH is the issue.
Right now in Ireland, it is just about the only issue for many people.
I know about the health service because of my experiences with it and in it.
My experiences with it are good.
In it, not so.
I don’t know who designs hospitals. I suspect it is accountants. And I suspect they are on a bonus for every euro they save.
I suspect they make wards and rooms, waiting areas and doctors’ offices as small as possible.
I suspect they don’t bother including what might be called leisure activity areas for patients, not all of whom are confined to bed all day.
I suspect they say that it is up to the patients to decide what they’ll watch when there are two televisions between four or six.
I suspect they say the radios aren’t great and the earphones won’t last, but what the hell if there are no radios for the patients.

I suspect they say that the showers with the six inch steps up to them and the narrow doors aren’t actually very good, but they’re a great price.
I suspect they say that if they put in a decent kitchen, it will only result in the production of decent food and decent food costs money so let’s not bother.
I suspect they say that centres of excellence will be good for health but even better for budgets as long as we make most outlying patients pay their own way to get to them.
I suspect they say that it’s not their fault if people have to hang around hospitals all day waiting to see consultants so they’re not obliged to provide them with any diversion of any kind.
I suspect they say that if people spend six or eight hours a day visiting sick friends or relatives and then have to fork our twelve or sixteen euro for parking, that’s just efficiency.
I suspect they say that it would be too expensive, even if it is the right thing to do, for nurses and other staff who deal with patients, to be provided with clean and sterilised uniforms on their arrival at work each day.
I suspect they say it would cost too much to sterilise every bed every time a patients leaves hospital.
I suspect they think that medical care is all that counts. I suspect they think they pay doctors and nurses enough and I suspect they don’t really care if porters and cleaners and dinner ladies leave on a regular basis because, I suspect they believe such people don’t require training of any kind.
Mostly, though, I suspect those who make the decisions I suspect are made relating to patient care as opposed to patients medical care, are made by people who don’t use public hospital and who probably think they shouldn’t have to.
I suspect they have contempt for those damned costly patients.
And I suspect nothing will ever change.
Thank God that, at least in the short term, I’m at home watching my fourth rugby match in two days.
Couldn’t do that in hospital.
Reckon they suspect providing satellite television, even at a small charge, would just be too much damned trouble.

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Parole

Out of hospital at least temporarily. No tunnel required.
But it was an escape nonetheless.
I don’t like hospitals though I am likely to spend an awful lot more time in them in the coming years, assuming, that is, there are years coming.
Because patients come last.
No, not when it comes to medical care of course.
I doubt there is anywhere in the world where the medical care is better than it is in Ireland.
But, God, the hospitals are depressing. They generate depression where previously, there was none.
Small, claustrophobic, grey rooms with a television up on the wall in the corner and a radio that doesn’t work.
Most patients see medical staff only occasionally. Certainly, they see them as often as they must and more.
But whether in a ward or a private room, patients are left alone to their own devices for long periods of the day.
And it is, for me anyway, depressing beyond endurance.
I know how lucky I am that my family is just a couple of miles away and that I got to see them often. But when they weren’t with me, they may as well have been on the moon.
And while everyone does everything to deal with my disease, my head, at the same times, turns into a kind of mush.
I hear, on a daily basis, how wonderful our health service is going to be. It may very well be. Mary Harney and Brendan Drumm may well be right.
But to be perfectly frank and perfectly selfish, that’s shag-all use to me.
I say patients come last because, when it comes to the design of hospitals, when it comes to their ‘non-health’ welfare, if you like, little consideration is given.
Why are the rooms so dull?
Why don’t the radios work?
Why is the food so unappetising?
Why are six people expected to share two televisions?
I could write a very long list.
But, for now, I’m going to be brief and enjoy my break from hospital. I’m going to enjoy with with Connie and Charlotte and of course, Eric the mutt.
I may have to go back in again soon, depending on blood counts and what not.
I dread it.
But if it all works, sure, it will have been worth it.
Question is, why they couldn’t make it all so much more pleasant.

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Paddy Murray Is (a bit) Unwell (this time) V

A FEW of the boys are working on a tunnel.
It’s slow work.
They’re using scalpels and hiding the dirt in their colostomy bags.
But progress is slow.
The plan is for them to emerge somewhere near the Guinness tap in a pub on James’s Street.
And I wish them the best of luck.
Personally, I’m not going to chance it, not because I don’t want to get out of here, believe me, I do.
It’s just that they’ve put me on the one antibiotic that reacts with alcohol. Makes you pretty ill. And when you’re pretty ill, the last thing you want is something that’s going to make you pretty ill. Or pretty iller. Or prettier ill. Whatever. You get my drift.

My defiance of authority came in the form of Singapore Noodles which were sneaked in by a friend on Saturday night, disguised as a bunch of grapes. The noodles, not the friend.
It was wonderful once again to taste something that tasted of something.
I am proposing, when I eventually finish my sentence, to launch a television game show called: Guess the Food.
In it, people will be blindfolded and fed hospital food and asked to guess what it is or, at least, what the hospital says it is.
“It’s beef,” they will cry only to be told it’s actually a pork chop.
“It’s a pork chop,” they will shout confidently, only to be told it’s bacon and cabbage.
“It’s bacon and cabbage,” they will roar to the cheers of their family members, who, like family members always do in such programmes, will be standing around looking like complete idiots.
But it won’t be bacon and cabbage, it will be jelly and ice cream.
I always thought there was at least a degree of overacting in films such as The Bridge Over the River Kwai and Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence.
But now I am beginning to see that incarceration does that to a body. It makes him overact dreadfully.
The boredom is the worst part of it. I don’t know. That could actually be a line from a prisoner of war movie for all I know.
And so I have taken to complaining.
I hate hotel rooms, but I don’t understand why single rooms in hospitals are half the size of single rooms in hotels. It’s the engineering I don’t understand. How do they make them so small? The architect must draw his plans under a microscope or something.
I don’t understand why they wake you up all the time either. Half the time they seem to wake you up to find out if you’re awake or not. And I bet they find that 100 per cent of the people they wake up in the middle of the night are actually awake. And that means they don’t feel guilty about waking you up.
And I hate the rubber covering on the mattress and the pillows. Yes, I know why it’s there. But I can say, honestly, in my case: Not guilty.
Most of all, I hate being without Connie and Charlotte and yes, Eric the mutt too.
Hospitals may repair the bodies of their patients, but they do nothing for their mental well being.
If Mary Harney had the faintest idea what she was doing, she would address the issue of patient welfare as well as patient well-being.
I’m off again.
Which is why one friend has promised to bring in to me, a painting for my wall.
The Moaner Lisa.

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Paddy Murray Is (a bit) Unwell (this time) IV

WHEN you’re in hospital, you’re asked a lot of questions.
You’re asked your date of birth on a regular basis.
(NOTE: If there is a Paddy Murray in James’s Hospital, and if he was also born on August 5, 1953, and if he is awaiting a barium enema or indeed, an enema of any description, could he please call a nurse and point out that he is not me.)
And you are asked about your allergies.
I am asked, for example, on an almost daily basis if i am allergic to penicillin or antibiotics of any kind.
I am not. But if I was and I told them so, they would not give me such medicine.
Every now and then, I am asked if I am allergic to anything.
I always reply in the affirmative and point out that I am seriously allergic to the following.
Sleep deprivation
Hospital food
Pain.

They don’t listen.
In fact, i wonder why they ask.
Because if there is one thing you are not permitted to do for any length of time in hospital, it’s sleep.
“Good night” and “good morning” are separated by only a tiny gap.
And if you are ever lucky enough to have a nurse tell you she, or indeed he, will leave you to sleep for an hour, be sure, be one hundred per cent sure, that during that hour, you will be visited by a cleaner, a junior doctor, a registrar, someone from accounts and the porter who is there to bring you, right now, for the x-ray which was scheduled for yesterday or tomorrow.
I have no doubt in my mind, that some patients die from sheer exhaustion.
Another certainty in hospital, is that you will be served hospital food. It is called hospital food not only because it is served in hospital, but because it is unique in manages to look so unappetising, in the way it can make carrots chewy.
And then there is pain.
Most hospital stays begin with pain.
You know the way it is. You have a pain in your elbow*. You go to the doctor. You have tests. You are told there is something wrong with your elbow (which you had more or less managed to figure out for yourself) and you have to go to hospital.
(*Insert hand, foot, heart, head, knee and so on, as appropriate.)
So off you go to hospital to get your pain removed.
And what do they do?
They start sticking needles into you. “It’s for bloods,” they say.
And if you have to get mucho drugs, they insert a canula or a Picc line. Worse still, they might decide to operate. And that involves cutting you and stitching you up again.
And it all hurts. It hurts a lot. And, if you’re a man, it hurts an awful lot indeed.
And so you lie awake in your bed, knowing that trying to sleep is pointless because someone will arrive ti wake you up if you make any attempt to get forty winks or even ten.
And you’re hungry because you can’t/won’t eat the food.
And you’re in pain.
You told them you’re allergic to all three.
Three?
Of course I meant four.
Stress. I’m alleregic to stress.
And boy, do they give it to you in spades in here.

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Paddy Murray Is (a bit) Unwell (this time) III

I don’t want Mary Harney to trip and break her leg today. I don’t want her to get a mild bout of food poisoning or to sprain her wrist or cut her hand.*
However, if any of those things were to happen to her, I hope she is brought directly to Accident and Emergency in one of Dublin’s hospitals. The one I’m in would, I’m sure, be fine.
I hope she is placed on trolley (an experience a friend of hers seemingly thought wasn’t too bad).

Whether she is then treated publicly (very unlikely) or privately (odds on), the level of care she receives from front-line professionals will be second to none.
That will be no thanks to her.
Mary Harney is presiding over an increasingly demoralised health service.
The current round of cutbacks, which she well knows are affecting patients, will be, for some, the last straw.
Soon, morale in the Irish health service will be as low as it is in the British health service. For reasons best known to herself, Ms Harney constantly compares the two when, if she had ambition or vision, she would look instead to the health services of Northern Europe.
While Ms Harney was in hospital receiving treatment for her leg or her wrist or her stomach, she would notice a few things.
Let’s, for the moment, make the daft assumption that she believes what she says about our health service and goes public.
After her day on the trolley, surrounded by drunks and druggies and overworked doctors and nurses, she would be taken to a ward which she would share with five others.
These would not be five people of her choice. They might be poor people. (They sure as hell won’t be rich people.) They might be people with drink problems. They might be people with dementia who shouldn’t be there but can’t be moved to suitable accommodation because of the cutbacks. The might, God forbid, even be voters.
She would see one, or at best two, television sets. If one of her companions hasn’t got one tuned to an Australian soap, she might get to see the Jeremy Kyle Show or Doctor Phil. (So busy are the real doctors, that she might actually get to see more of Phil than she does of them.)
The chances of her actually getting to see something she wants to see are slim.
But there’s always the radio.
Well, no, there isn’t always the radio.
Sure, there are radios built into the bedside lockers. But there are, no longer, any earphones for them.
Well, she can open the window and breathe in the air.
No she can’t. Many of them are nailed shut - illegal surely - to prevent dust from building work getting into the wards.
Depending on which ward she’s in, Mary may or may not be able to have a shower.]
If she has damaged her foot, the six inch step - yes, it is six inches I measured it - into the shower might prevent her from getting in.
But what would surely stop her, is the gap into which those wishing to have a shower have to squeeze, to get through the doors.
Whether it is politically correct to say it or not, it’s a fact. Mary Harney would not fit in most of the showers in St James’s hospital.
At least she could occupy herself on the web. She can, in fairness. If she manages to get to the cafe in the entrance hall where, for the price of a cup of coffee you get a few minutes on the web.
At least in the cafes in the entrance hall, the food is ok.
So why can’t it be ok in the rest of the hospital?
I’m pretty sure Mary wouldn’t like the food on offer in the hospital.
There is no excuse in 2007 for food to be other than tasty, appetising and nourishing.
Mary Harney seems to think the health service can be run like a budget airline. It can’t.
It won’t pay for itself. It won’t make money.
One of the primary functions of the state - it’s actually enshrined in the Constitution - is its duty to look after the citizens.
Mary Harney and her highly paid colleagues have failed to look after the citizens of Ireland on many levels.
The Health Service is only one area of complete and abject failure.
*This is a lie. I wouldn't mind if Mary Harney got food poisoning and ended up in one of the hospitals she seems to think are wonderful.

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Paddy Murray Is (a bit) Unwell (this time) II

WHEN you walk into a ward in an Irish hospital, one of the first things you will see is the television. Or maybe two televisions.
You may think that these televisions are a sign that the hospital and ultimately the HSE, wants to keep patients entertained, keep them occupied.
In fact, they are a sign of the utter contempt in which patients are held by the HSE.
In they eyes of those who administer our health service, right up to Minister Harney, patients are irritants, barely better than doctors and nurses.
Why else would one television set, or at best two, be put into a ward containing four or six patients?
If there is one thing that makes spending time in an Irish hospital bearable, it is the knowledge that those in whose care you have been placed, are dedicated, hard working and good at what they do.

It is, of course, a cliché to speak of the ‘caring professions.’ But there is no doubt that doctors and nurses, and indeed, the vast majority of those who work in hospitals in whatever area, are caring people. Sure, they get paid. And some of them get paid very well.
But the work is hard and the pay isn’t always what it should be.
It is a mystery, then, as to why our health service is constantly criticised and seems, forever, to be under attack from patients, their relatives and, indeed, those who work on the front line.
If I was employed by the health service, i would find it hard not to become demoralised in the fact of the relentless criticism.
But then, the criticism is rarely directed at those on front line.
It is those behind desks, be that in the Department of Health or in the HSE, that justifiably, bear the brunt of the criticism.
(Who was it who decided to put two television sets on the wall in a ward for four, or indeed six patients?
If the person furthest from the television wants to watch it, the sound has to be so loud so as to disturb the person nearest the set who doesn’t want to watch at all. And do they suppose that the two, or three, on each side of a room all want to watch the same thing?)
There are something like 17,000 administrative workers in the HSE.
Some of these people, the ones at the ‘top’, are the ones who get bonuses for, presumably ensuring less money is spent.
They are also the people who hire and fire in the HSE. And so don’t expect an announcement about thousands of redundancies amongst administrative staff in the HSE any day soon.
(Who was it who decided to install showers in hospital bathrooms, that have four inch steps up to them and which have doors so narrow,that many, if not most people, would struggle to get through them?)
It seems unlikely that the thousands who work in administration in the HSE have avoided illness all their lives, have managed never to spend a night in hospital or do not have relatives who have spent periods of time in the care of of our health service.
And so it is a mystery why the facilities for patients are so utterly dire in Irish hospitals. It is as if the decisions made are made by people who believe they will never darken the door of a hospital for any reason and don’t really care about those who must.
You could describe most Irish hospitals as ‘minimalist.’ But not minimalist in the sense of chic or fashionable. Minimalist in the sense of providing the minimum facilities for patients and, probably, staff.
(Who decided on the size of patients’ rooms in the new wing of St James’s Hospital? I ask because, to my certain knowledge, someone involved in planning the new building asked some of the hospital’s nurses if there was any way of improving the design of the hospital’s wards and rooms. The nurses told this man that the ‘side rooms’ were too small. He took it on board. The ‘side rooms’ in the new wing are smaller.)
It is well established, that the environment in which patients ‘live’ can help - or hinder - their recovery.
And yet, St Luke’s, arguably the country’s best known cancer hospital which at least, has the benefit of gardens, has been marked for closure.
Not a word from the highly paid Ms Harney about her plans as the good people of south Dublin and, it has to be said, beyond, dug deep into their pockets over the years to help keep Luke’s at the forefront of cancer treatment.
Ms Harney would like to move Luke’s into the already congested James’s campus, where the only grass you’re likely to see is that being smoked by some tattooed yobbo outside the front door.
(Who decides on the unchanging and unappetising menu? Do they eat it? Do they know what ordinary people eat? Do they know that sick people sometimes like to have good food?)
No doubt it’s because she’s always chauffeur driven (by a garda) that the same Ms Harney doesn’t realise the panic and fear that will sweep over unfortunate parents everywhere who have to rush their sick offspring to the proposed new children’s hospital on the Mater site.
The health service seems to be run for the convenience of those who run it.
This remains one of the few civilised countries where no attempt is being made to make wifi broadband available to patients.
It is one of the few civilised countries where no effort is being made to make the food served to patients appetising or presentable.
It is one of the few civilised countries where the old are left to rot in hospital wards designed for the sick so that books can be balanced.
It is one of the few civilised countries where there is a belief that if enough money is thrown at the health problem, it will go away.
Did I say civilised?
There are countries on this earth with little or indeed no resources, whose rulers make a better job of looking after the sick.
Civilised?
Ms Harney and her bureacratic pet the HSE achieve nothing, but to insult those of us who must use their service and those who work in it.
Enjoy your pay rise Mary.

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Paddy Murray Is (a bit) Unwell (this time)

DAMMIT.
Back in hospital.
The cure didn’t cure me.
I have no intention of going into all the gory details (and believe me, they’re gory) but suffice to say that the ghastly infection in my foot is still doing its worst.
It’s damned sore - up around 9 out of 10 (on a male scale. It’s probably only about 4 on a female scale.)
I have been pumped full of so many antibiotics, that I’m pretty sure, 99 per cent of the world’s infections wouldn’t come near me. Wouldn’t dare.

Sadly, I’ve got the macho one per cent, the Rambo of blasted foot infections, the one nasty piece of work that is doing to my foot what Eric Cantona (bless him) once did to a loudmouth fan.
So the little bag has been packed again, the bottles of water have been purchased, the sweets stuffed into my little locker, my toothbrush and razor laid neatly beside me and I’m back in my jim jams, back in a hospital bed and thoroughly miserable.
Well, no. That’s not fair.
I’m miserable. But it’s not thoroughly.
I know that what’s wrong with me is relatively serious. It’s not as bad as, say, leprosy. But it’s a lot worse than a grazed knee.
So while hospital is where I don’t want to be, it’s the right place to be.
I desperately miss Connie and Charlotte. I hate saying goodbye to the little mite (that’s Charlotte, not Connie) even though I haven’t been much fun for her these past few months.
She thinks daddies are people who lie on couches complaining all the time.
If and when I get better, and if prayer makes people better I’m half way there, I am going to play with Charlotte all day every day until I can stand it no longer.
Or until she can stand it no longer.
Today, I was seen by a total of five doctors. Sometimes, it takes five doctors with different specialties to come up with a solution to a difficult problem
And my foot is a difficult problem, a bit like the rest of me.
It’s not been the best three months of my life.
But three years ago, I was in hospital for a long period.
And that ended with me being given the cheerful new that I was no longer editor of the Sunday Tribune because ‘we want someone who’s there all the time, not someone who’s sick.’
Hopefully, i am in more secure employment these days. And anyway, the Sunday World is a better newspaper than the Sunday Tribune. At every level.
And, of course, three years ago, I probably had some daft picture of Eric Cantona or Denis Law or maybe even some place in the South of France as my screensaver and desktop display.
Now, I have Charlotte’s picture.
And even when some days are a bit dark, that’s always there to cheer me up.

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) VII

STEVE McQueen tried to do it on a motorbike.
They tunnelled out of Colditz.
But I got out in a taxi.
Hospital’s not that bad really. The staff would cheer you up.
It is absolutely correct to say that everyone on the front line of our health service works hard, does everything they can and tries their best for the patients.
It is equally true to say that they don’t really have a hope.

This week, six porters tried to do the work of 17 in the x-ray department at St James’s Hospital in Dublin.
Four phlebotomists tried to do the work of seven, taking blood samples from around the wards.
The doctor who saw me at 8am on Friday morning, was the same one who discharged me twelve hours later.
That’s thanks to the cutbacks, put in place by the HSE. They’re the cutbacks, we are told, which are having no effect on patients. That’s just simply a lie.
The one thing most health service front line workers seem to have in common with each other, is a desire to get out.
It would take an article the length of a short novel to detail the problems in Ireland’s health service.
Suffice it to say, that comparing it with Britain - as Health Minister Mary Harney did during the week when comparing the ratio of administrators to front line staff - isn’t a good place to start.
If there is a health service in a worse state than ours, it’s theirs.
Politicians have, of course, chucked money at this problem for years. But it’s they’ve done.
They have written cheques without, it seems, having the foggiest idea as to why.
Bureaucrats told them the service needed more money, and so, fearing an electoral backlash, more money was provided.
But was was needed, and what IS needed, is a root and branch examination of the service.
Someone needs to find out why the vast bulk of workers are unhappy, unfulfilled, frustrated, planning to leave - or all four.
Doctors tell you their job is all but impossible.
I can vouch that my own doctors work incredible hours. And if they are rewarded with salaries similar - when even everything is taken into consideration - to that our TDs get, well, so be it. They’re actually worth more.
The facilities in which the medical staffs have to work, and therefore in which the patients have to be treated, are abysmal.
Waiting rooms are overcrowded. Newly built buildings were designed a decade or more ago and are now completely unsuitable.
If our minister and those she has appointed to run the health service were even vaguely serious about improving the situation, they would, for example, ensure that the food served to patients was top class. It isn’t.
They would ensure that free broadband was provided for patients. It isn’t.
They would ensure a standard of cleanliness that was second to none. They haven’t.
They would provide sufficient staff in every area, and fund it by cutting administration costs. But they haven’t.
Imagine. There is one administrator for every five frontline staff in the health service. Why?
I’m at home and receiving my intravenous antibiotics from a super company called Tara Healthcare. If such a company was used more, hundreds of beds could be freed up in hospitals.
But no. We just blather on, with the Minister spending more time on RTE than she does behind her desk.
She is providing over a demoralised service.
And while she may talk about improvements, the reality is, nothing has changed.
I’m getting good treatment. I hope I’m not well.
Sadly, though, the health service is critically ill.

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) VI

THIS is like the longest flight I’ve ever been on.
I’m not on a plane and I’m certainly not going anywhere.
I’m stuck in a hospital. And it reminds me of flying.
It’s the food.
If you accept that a chicken is a chicken and a potato is a potato and a pea is a pea, it is hard to credit the way the different ways those ingredients end up on your plate in, say, l’Ecrivan or Chapter One and in hospital or, indeed, on a flight or in boarding school.

We can only presume that, particularly in hospital, the ingredients are pretty decent. It seems unlikely that, despite the fact that our government has deemed the appointment of more committee chairmen to be of greater importance than financing the health service, hospital kitchens are supplied with dodgy ingredients.
And I accept, entirely, that cooking for 700 differs greatly from cooking for seven.
But it is nonetheless mind-boggling, how a piece of chicken can end up as part of a magnificent meal in l’Ecrivan, albeit at a price, and can, when served in hospital (or on a flight or in boarding school) make you enquire as to the location of the nearest McDonald’s restaurant.
(You will note that, today, I am not talking about wine or Guinness or pubs or anything of that sort. Mind you, I quite liked the suggestion of a hospital bar offering pre or post theatre drinks. Wonder if there’s an interval during which you could order them?)
My first encounter with food produced on an industrial scale was in an Irish College. My parents, though they loved me, handed me a nine-month sentence in the place from which I would have escaped had I been able to dig a tunnel.
The food was typically industrial.
You know. Take ordinary ingredients and cook them until they are bereft of flavour.
But was Fridays which were most memorable.
On that day, we were served what we were assured was a vegetable soup.
It consisted, I am sure, of the vegetables which had not been eaten during the week, boiled. In milk.
I kid you not.
These vegetables, carrots onions potatoes, peas and turnips, were boiled in milk until they were soft and mushy. And then they were served up to us unfortunate children.
We called it “Chef’s vomit.” I never found out if that was to do with taste or appearance or both.
Having served my sentence in that Irish c ollege in Ring, Co Waterford, I was later sentenced to nine months behind bars (not that type) in my last year in school in Blackrock College. (That sentence was, at least, deserved.)
They were way ahead of the game when it came to recycling.
Because on Mondays, we got a kind of beef chop which was, largely, inedible.
On Tuesdays, it was some type of beef stew, made, we believed, with the uneaten portions of the chops.
On Wednesdays, it was mince and mash, constructed, or deconstructed, from the uneaten stew.
On Thursdays, we got a beef soup and you can figure out from where it came.
We got fish on Fridays by which time we were so hungry we would have eaten the beef chops.
I managed to largely avoid institutions until this damned disease forced me to spend time in hospital.
But long-haul flights more than made up for that. You know the feeling: “I ordered the fish, this is chicken.” “Sorry sir, that is fish, no, hold on, it’s pork, no, it’s definitely the fish sir.”
I have had, don’t get me wrong, edible airline food. The nuts aren’t bad. And the occasional biscuit is passable.
In fact, it’s not that the food is actually inedible. Hunger makes the food edible.
It’s just that I wonder why someone somewhere goes to all the trouble of removing taste from things like chicken and potatoes and peas. I wonder why they don’t leave some flavour so you have a small clue as to what it is you’re eating.
It’s what they do in hospitals too.
I would love our health minister or indeed, the head of the Health Service Executive, to live for a week, if they could, on hospital food.
I am not suggesting the food is other than healthy.
It’s healthy enough.
Unless you’re talking about mental health.
Because it’s depressing in the extreme.
Mind you, now that I think of it, it’s not so bad that it couldn’t be improved if accompanied by a decent claret.

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) V

The Dog and Doc. That’s one of the suggestions I have had for the new bar here in St James’s Hospital.
Of course, there’s not going to be a new bar. It’s not that some people don’t think it’s a good idea to help, well, cheer up the sick.
It’s just that all the money is being spend on flippin’ medical equipment.
That and administrators. Too many administrators.
I can’t believe that firing a couple of administrators and hiring a few barmen and maids instead wouldn’t be the progressive thing to do.
Quite liked The Farmer Giles as a suggestion too.
Anyway, we need somebody progressive to look at our hospitals.
Here, for example, you have access to broadband - once you pay €3 for a cup of coffee which is not quite blackmail but is something reasonably close.
Again, it would seem to make perfect sense to have WiFi broadband available for all patients in hospitals.

I have no idea how many patients would actually use it. But that’s hardly the point.
Those who did use it would, without any doubt, recover more quickly from whatever it is they have. Unless it’s leprosy or the Black Death.
There is no evidence that using the internet has any effect whatever on leprosy or the Black Death.
But boredom is a problem in hospital. Especially if you’re only sick from the ankles down. It’s a problem if you have anything which doesn’t make you feel sick. Because all you end up feeling is bored. And when you’re bored you start thinking. And when you start thinking you start thinking about how sick you are even if you’re not. And you start thinking you’re more sick than you actually are. And you start getting depressed. And you start thinking you’re dying and you’re not long for this world and...
... and you start thinking you’d murder a pint.
I don’t think The Burst Appendix is actually a great name for a pub.
I mentioned the idea of a licensed premises to one of my doctors this morning. (I say one of my doctors. So many doctors and specialist nurses have I now, that I’m thinking of charging them a small fee to come and see me. The proceeds would, of course, go towards the construction of a, yes I know I’m banging on about it, bar.
The particular doctor didn’t dismiss the idea out of hand. In fact, she seemed to be about to tell me that, in her native country, such a thing wasn’t completely unheard of.
She is, of course, Australian.
But the fact that she didn’t knock the idea has given my campaign (I hope one day it will become, as Arlo Guthrie once suggested in relation to his own campaign, a movement) a major boost.
It would be dishonest to suggest that my Australian doctor has actually joined my campaign. She hasn’t. She just didn’t laugh at it.
The Nurse and Bottle? Not if it’s that kind of bottle.
Drink is getting a bad name. And the sad thing is, that it’s people who can’t do it, that are giving it the bad name. Binge drinkers. People who drink and want to fight. People who drink and get loud. People who drink and eat kebabs and then puke them up. People who drink and vandalise things. People who drink and frighten people. Bad drinkers.
There have always been bad drinkers.
But once, drink was respected. It was seen by some almost as a cure all.
It’s medicinal qualities were appreciated far more than they are now.
I note that, today, a report in Britain rails against middle-class drinkers.
God help us, what are the middle class supposed to do? Sit around all evening watching Emmerdale or Wife Swap or the feckin’ X Factor?
If you ask me, it’s soaps and reality television that have the middle classes turning to the (cheeky, fruity, aroma of fruit and maybe a hint of tobacco) bottle (of a decent Burgundy) in the first place.
Sure, it’s keeping them off the streets, isn’t it?
As far as my campaign is concerned, it’s onwards and upwards.
Right now, though, I think the most likely name for my bar, is The Cutback and Closure.

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) IV

YOU might get out on Monday, they said.
But I’m something of an old hand at this now.
And so I never believe the first date I’m given for my departure from hospital.
I reckoned on Tuesday.
But of course, I should have known.
My Tuesday is their Wednesday or Thursday.
It’s the way it is with doctors.
It’s like my nine o’clock in the morning is their midday.
It’s the way of things. Time is more or less meaningless for doctors. If it wasn’t, so busy are they in our over-administered health service, they’d go mad.
So I’m still in my hospital bed, and still on page 84 of The Time Traveller’s Wife.

I’m enjoying it. But I keep falling asleep every time I try to read any more of it.
It must be the drugs.
Sodium benzoate, sodium bisulphate, ascorbic acid - and that’s just the Lucozade.
Fortunately, my lunch today was not served by the lady who informed me as she placed yesterday’s offering in front of me, that she ‘felt dreadful.’
Today it was the lady who had the good grace to put my lunch in front of me before she turned to leave the room, coughing and sneezing.
Believe me, suggesting that we divert money into providing sterile pods for the sick, for at least the really sick, is not an idea borne from the ingestion of hallucinogenic drugs.
Talking of which, isn’t it a really brave move by Ireland’s pharmacists to pick on heroin addicts in order to advance their campaign for more money.
Yes, I know they work hard. But so too do those who have dedicated their lives to helping our unfortunate addicts who have now been abandoned by pharmacists not noted for their moderation when it comes to pricing their products.
“We were left with no alternative,” the pharmacists said. Apart from being utter tosh, that’s just a lie.
No alternatives? Why don’t they go on hunger strike or something that might actually test whether or not they have any support from their customers, addicted or otherwise?
My bet is they wouldn’t be thrown a single pea, let alone a sandwich.
Dammit, hospital leaves too much time for thinking.
Right now, I’m thinking how Ireland really could have won this rugby world cup were it not for all the things that are wrong in the camp and with Irish rugby in general - like the fact that very few people are playing it anymore and that it is still, in the main, a middle class game which is fiercely protected from invasion by, well, the middle classes who run it.
I’m thinking how our government has become utterly corrupt, generating sinecures for its supporters at public expense.’
I’m thinking how we have a health service run by people who think it’s ok to shut down front line services while they still have highly paid people in charge of the purchase of staple clips. Let’s see the administrative jobs going, boys.
I’m thinking how those who run our national airline have managed to turn it from a much loved institution to an organisation which is tolerated by some and loathed by others by loved by none.
I’m thinking how the entire Celtic Tiger business was, in the heel of the hunt, the greatest exercise in spin ever foisted on a population, a hoodwinking more successful even than that attempted by Blair and Bush in relation to Iraq.
We know know, there were not Weapons of Mass Destruction.
And we know now that there was no great wealth in the Celtic Tiger.
If there was, why do we still have poor?|
Why do we still have homeless?
Why do we still have some dirty hospitals?|
Why is our healthcare system - brilliant when you’re in it - so badly run?
Why are so many of our ‘minor’ roads (they’re major for the people who have to use them every day) so lousy?
Why don’t we have enough schools?
Why don’t we have enough gardai?
Why are we selling so many of our assets?
Why are we selling the tolling of so many of our roads to private enterprise?
Why do we need Public Private Partnerships in the first place, if we’re so rich?
Because we’re not.
Only politicians, with their 22 pay rises and their sinecures are.
And, it seems, only those of us with time to think. realise it.

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes) III

I’d love a pint. I really would. I am, as they say, gumming for one.
It’s always the same when I’m somewhere they don’t have pints.
And they don’t have pints in hospital. Not pints of Guinness, I mean. They do have pints. Of blood.
But it’s not quite the same thing, drinking through your arm.
So I’d love a creamy. A roaster. A pint of plain.
Not right now, not this second.
But I’d love to have one this evening. Or maybe two. Might even stretch to three.

Being ill, or a little bit ill, or not at all ill but with an annoying infection, I firmly believe in the restorative powers of pints. Specifically, pints of Guinness.
For years, you were handed a bottle of Guinness after donating blood in this country.
Women who gave birth were immediately given Guinness every day to build up their strength. Their children were, however, forced to wait years for the same, er, beneficial medicine.
I have no idea why such practices ended.
Economic reasons, no doubt. Some accountant figured out that by stopping the Guinness, they could buy more ledgers or pencil sharpeners or something.
Or maybe, Carlsberg or Heineken got the hump and demanded equal treatment. Silly, that. Lager, though, hasn’t got the same powers as Guinness.
I’m pretty sure that if the lady with the trolley came around today and asked us all if we wanted tea, coffee or Guinness, she would be returning to her kitchen with pots of cold tea and coffee.
I am also pretty sure that, after a couple of trips to the trolley, we patients would all be feeling a great deal better.
And even if hospital food is, well, hospital food, boy, wouldn’t we look forward to it if it was to be accompanied by a nice Merlot or a nice, round Cote de Rhone.
You may very well think I am obsessed with alcohol.
I am not.
I merely miss it.
I don’t miss it as much as I miss my partner or my child or my dog or my house or my bed at home or a decent cup of tea.
But it’s not here. They don’t encourage it in hospitals.
And I miss it.
It’s not that I think about it all the time.
This morning, for example, I was thinking again about what a good my idea to put each sick person into their own sterile pod.
I thought about that again when the lady who brought me my breakfast informed me that she felt ‘absolutely dreadful.’
Brilliant, I thought. She feels sick and she’s walking around a hospital handing out food to people who are trying to get better. Put her in a pod, I thought, and stop her from spreading her sickness.
And today I also thought about England reaching the final of the Rugby World Cup.
I thought, there’s a mediocre, ageing, average team in the world cup final.
Why?
Because they have passion and heart and determination. And they have been well prepared.
And our younger, more skilled and more fancied team dumped out in the qualifying round.
If we’d been properly prepared, we could have won the damned thing.
And then I was looking at the hung-over England fans and the hung-over former England player Matt Dawson on television talking about the joy of the England fans.
The best of luck to them.
There is a perfectly logical reason as to why there should be bars in hospitals.
I’m not talking here about The Dog and Duck or the King’s Arms.
Maybe The Doctor and Nurse or The Cut and Stitch or something.
But it would be strictly for patients only.
And admission would be by coloured wrist band so that certain patients, for whom a drink might be harmful, would be wearing a red wrist band and would not be admitted.
There might be, say, a green wrist band for someone allowed four pints and a blue one for someone allowed three, a yellow one for someone allowed two and a pink, yes, I think pink, for someone allowed one.
And it would only be Guinness.
And maybe some decent red wines.
I mean, the thing is supposed to be medicinal.
Of course, a mini bar in the room would solve the problem too...

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Paddy Murray Is (not that) Unwell (he hopes)

❍Two of the loves of my life, Charlotte and her 'brother' Eric

Back to hospital.
Though I visit St James’s Hospital in Dublin regularly to see my doctors - I think I have five or six at the last count - it’s almost three years since I have spent a night here.
Last time, at least, I was sick.
Hospital’s a grand place to be when you’re sick. In fact, I can’t think of anywhere better. And, when you get right down to it, hospitals were built to look after sick people. So it all makes a perfect kind of sense.
Right now, I am not what you might call sick in the conventional sense.
I feel tremendously well. Any feeling of nausea or being unwell that I feel is a result, still, of Ireland’s lacklustre performance in Rugby World Cup.

Lacklustre? Lack-everything.
Anyway, I’m here in hospital feeling perfectly well from the ankles up.
And therein lies the nub of my problem.
Since I was diagnosed with this damned cutaneous lymphoma about 12 years ago, I have been well from the ankles up bar one period where I was well only from the ankles and wrists up. You will gather that it was my hands and feet that were causing me problems.
And since the last time I was confined to hospital - they don’t actually confine you, they just strongly suggest you stay - my partner has given birth to our wonderful daughter Charlotte. And, up to four months ago, the greatest pleasure in my life was going for a walk around our neighbourhood with Charlotte and the hairy Samoyed we like to described as her ‘brother’ Eric.
Yes, I walked around with a deal of pride. I probably looked smug and maybe, even, arrogant. But certainly proud.
But the feet started acting up. Bastards. If I didn’t need them, they’d be gone long ago. But, like most bodily organs, they have a role to play.
Whether it is to do with being on a clinical trial for a new drug and having stopped my old drug, I can’t say. Even with the old drug which was, generally, excellent for my health bar the fact that it raised my cholesterol so high it almost killed me, my feet were bad.
But they just got worse and worse.
And then the infection set in.
Now, it’s four months since I wore a pair of shoes. Not that I measure happiness by the number of pairs of shoes I get to wear in a given month. Was Imelda Marcos happy, I ask?
Now, I’m in hospital. And I feel well from the ankles up.
Here, the sound that wakes me in the morning is not the baby pressing the buttons on her musical frog, but the nurse telling me I’m about to be fed more antibiotics through a vein in my arm. Funny that, you’d think it would be a vein in my leg, legs normally being nearer to feet than arms.
Confined, so to speak, to a hospital bed and big things happenning elsewhere.
Tomorrow and Sunday, there are two Rugby World Cup Finals.
First up, it’s England and France. I’m cheering for France.
I’d love t o cheer for England. I love the place. I like the English. I admire many of their players.
But, even though I cheer them on at cricket, there’s something....
Maybe it’s “Swing Low...” I don’t know.
And then, on Sunday, I’ll be cheering on Argentina, largely because I think world rugby has given them a raw deal over the years and they have beaten the big boys politically and I’d love to see them winning on the field.
(I know, though, that some would take an Argentina/France final as some kind of vindication of Ireland’s lousy performance. But it would be no such thing.)
For the first time ever, I will be watching Rugby World Cup semi-finals stone-cold sober.
No pints. No wine. Nothing.
I cannot imagine what the experience may be like.
A friend has suggested I will interrupt the game with cries of ‘handball” and “that was a push.”
He said I might even express surprise that the goalkeeper is so far off his line or that someone or other missed a perfect opportunity for a clean header at goal.
Unlikely.
I will, however, miss the expertise that comes with the fourth or fifth pint. I will miss the knowledge of the game and the tactical nous that comes half way through the sixth pint.
But I am, despite what some say, in the care of what I can personally attest, to be one of the finest healthcare systems in the world.
It is a system which would be all the finer if the enormous layer of bureaucracy at its top could be removed or halved.
But on the basis that a decision to halve bureaucracy would be taken by bureaucrats, such a thing is as unlikely as politicians voting to reduce their number or to pay themselves an honest salary.
But let nobody say that once in the door of an Irish hospital, the care is not as good or better than anywhere in the world.
Let nobody say that, despite the problems, the health service is not generous in the way it deals with patients, in that I, and several I have met since my latest incarceration, as being fed drugs unavailable to patients in Britain’s much lauded healthcare system on the grounds of price alone.
So while I will complain - of course I will, I’m a grumpy old man - about being in hospital in the first place.
While I worry that seeing my much loved game of rugby through sober eyes might alter my view of it entirely.
And while I miss my partner Connie, my daughter Charlotte and my dog Eric, madly, I am in a place designed and built for sick people.
Even if they’re only sick from the ankles up.
(At leat, I hope it’s only from the ankels up.)

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