Читать книгу In Stitches - Nick Edwards, Dr. Nick Edwards - Страница 26

I knew I was going to enjoy this consultation from the outset. He was 92, looked 72, and had been flirting with the nurses from the moment the ambulance brought him.

‘Hello sir. How are you?’ I asked.

‘You’ll have to speak up, I am very deaf,’ he responded.

I reassured him that he didn’t need to worry as I was very loud. Now that we knew that this wasn’t going to be a private conversation, despite closing the curtains around the cubicle (which I used to think made the room soundproof), we started the consultation.

I soon found out that he had chest pain. It sounded like angina – a condition he is known to suffer from. Normally it settles with a spray of a drug called GTN. However, he had first got the pain an hour ago and was still in pain. While my colleague did an ECG, I put in an intravenous line and started some medications to ease the discomfort.

‘So what were you doing when the pain came on?’ I asked.

‘It happened when my health visitor was with me. She was the one who called the ambulance.’

I enquired why he had a health visitor and how often she came round to see him.

‘She comes round once every three weeks, just to see how I am and help me … you know.’

I wasn’t too sure what he was talking about, but I thought he must have been describing a new government scheme, whereby community matrons visit patients with chronic conditions at home every couple of weeks to check that they are OK. They then liaise with their GP and try and implement plans to keep them out of hospital. I asked him if that was what he meant by a health visitor.

‘She isn’t organised by the GP. I organised her myself about three years ago. She has been very good to me,’ he responded.

Now I was confused. Naive as well, as it turned out! I continued in my questioning.

‘So does she help round the house then?’

‘No my friend.’ He leaned forward and in a theatrical whisper said, ‘She comes round to help me ejaculate as I can’t really do it myself. It was when she was playing with me that I got the chest pain. It was so bad that she had to stop and call the ambulance.’

‘What a bloke’, I thought, ‘Honest and still enjoying life, and very friendly’. I smiled and in the notes wrote pain started on ‘mild exertion’. It is encounters like this that make my job pleasurable.