What's pi$$ed me off today.........!!

My car has been away at a bodyshop for two weeks after a hit and run. New passenger door, rear door and wheel arch repair - and it goes down as a fault claim as I do not know who did it .

It has returned to the dealership today and they have had to send it back as they are not satisfied with a minor blemish in the paintwork. I have been told that unless it was pointed it you wouldn't notice it but the bodyshop manager at the dealership knows me well (I am VERY picky) and said that I will definitely pick it up on my inspection and he wants it 110% perfect.

I am desperate to get my own car back and hand back my courtesy car and the extra two days it will be away for has annoyed me but I must be thankful for the honesty that a mistake has been made and it will be put right and be perfect. I miss my car and want it back

 

A Honda and BMW you can't be that picky

 

Don't leave out the Yamaha!!!!!!!!!!

 

Stinky's ok

 

sitting here at work behind a bloody great big wall and my bike being in the car park on a lovely sunny day grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

 

Holiday? What? Again..? You lucky girl!

 

My life has gone very wrong. I am inadequate and incompetent. :-(

 

I have just had what might be described as an Interesting Day. My GP felt there 'might be something going on with my foot' when I had a post-Flying check up a week ago and she didn't understand why my legs remained swollen, so booked me into a Fractures Clinic. I spent 2/3 of today trooping between various waiting areas, being poked, scanned, and given more and more bits of paper which I have to take to the next waiting or scanning area. I am a boringly healthy person, (I didn't even know the name of my GP), so am utterly unfamiliar with the Organised Chaos which passes for life in a modern hospital in the UK.

During one of the poking and prodding sessions following some X-rays of my left leg and foot, the consultant looked alarmed that I had driven myself to the appointment, let alone had managed 3 or 4 mile walks most days in the past couple of weeks. He opined that my left leg should not be bearing any weight at all, far less be subjected to tramping around fields and woods and pavements in Tunbridge Wells. Apparently I have a minor fracture of one of the bones in my foot (that would have been the gear lever, I suppose); a broken ankle, fractures in the heads of both the tibia and fibia and I've torn part of my quadriceps muscle out of the knee, hence the persistent and weighty 'saddle bag' of fluid sloshing around on the inside of the knee. Apparently I need an 'urgent MRI' followed by knee surgery.

I have had to be quite firm in refusing to be put on crutches. I did allow some removable ankle bracing (which has come off as soon as I arrived home). I promise I am not being a naughty patient; it just seems to me that they are being dramatically over-cautious. I will put the brace back on when I take the dog out tomorrow.

But my main gripe is that I have just visited a monumentally-inefficient organisation. It is no wonder that the NHS is haemorrhaging money! The money spent on the aircraft arrival-style screens to tell named patients where to go next could so easily have paid for another few nurses to pop their heads out of the nursing station and tell me that the doctor is now ready. Most patients seem to wander the corridors helplessly, peering into brightly-lit but empty rooms in vain hope of finding a medical person to tell them where to sit down. How they get on if they are partially sighted, foreign or have less than Mensa levels of IQ beats me! Even paying for my car parking was an exercise in frustration: I inserted my debit card into the parking machine to discover it wouldn't read the card. I walked to another machine. That was out of order. I went back inside to ask how to pay. The receptionist pointed me at a cash point from which I extracted £20. I returned to the first machine and lined up behind a burly man who rapidly became Mr Angry because the machine swallowed his £20 and failed to give any change.

I headed for the shop near the Reception area and asked for change. Grudgingly, the woman gave me two fivers and a ten pound note observing that 'the machines give you change'. Er, no they don't, dear. I stopped a member of the public in the waiting area and asked to change one of the fivers into coins. Thus armed, I returned to the original machine and attacked it with the necessary fiver and coins - it swallowed the note, found it unpalateable but couldn't return the thing because it had become so creased up inside the machine that it wouldn't emerge from the slot. Instead it sat there, whirring away, trying repeatedly to eject my money. I worked out that swiping my car keys rapidly across the creased surface at just the right moment might enable the note to pass freely.

Perhaps the hospital suffers a lot with vandalism and minor theft, but after a few seconds' worth of this activity, my collar was being felt by a security guard, certain that he'd caught a villain brazenly nicking cash out of the machines. Well, who can blame him? I suppose I must fit the bill of your typical car park ticket payment machine cash-nicking criminal in Tunbridge Wells!

All was resolved eventually, although just for a fleeting moment I did regret refusing the crutches: I might have held the security guard at bay while I tried out my story on him. Oh, yes ...the unkindest cut of all? The faffing around with the payment machine caused my stay at the hospital to nudge into another hour, so that was another £1 added to the fee!

 

You have my sympathy. A very long time ago a hospital sent me home with a leg broken in 3 places. Like you, I just carried on. I was pretty shocked when the problem was discovered 6 weeks after the accident. It was already pretty much mended by then, but it's never been quite right.
Best let the NHS have it's way with you. I don't think they can make it very much worse..........

 

At some point I suppose I should ask them to X-Ray the other leg! But the car did hit the one on the left, so in fairness, that was probably worse

 

im gonna hold off on the praise for refusing crutches and walking about....many moons ago i was mown down by a drunken driver as i passed under a bus shelter he proceeded to drive over the shelter and luckily for me i was in the apex of the fallen shelter, not so lucky was the fact i tried to catch the shelter and the car resulting in my knee collapsing in the wrong direction tearing numerous ligaments...all would have been had i remained still like i was told by the police that attended ...had i not tried to stand ( working on the mindset that if i dont stand im dead) ...i stood and then went down like a sack of the proverbial, id achieved what id set out to do so didnt care and proceeded to pass out. alas what id also achieved was to entangle what was left of the ligaments into the knee joint and proceed to shred them beyond repair as i fell again, the result? 2 cruciate ligaments no longer functional leading to the remainder compensating and then in my own stubbornness over the years pushing what should have been a restricted joint beyond its limits resulting in further surgery about 10 yrs later to remove part of a split cartilage due to the knee joint floating rather than gliding around causing it to impact on every step i took and now its starting to give problems again.
My point???.....just do yourself a favour and use what you can until you know the full extent of the damage and to prevent yourself furthering the damage already done by the accident ( if you havnt already ) ....sorry if it sounds as if im preaching or teaching you to suck eggs ....its your body , your choice but i always find someone elses experiences can sometimes clear a clouded judgement.....hope its not too sinister and is fixable.

 

WPMOT.....all bloody week glorious sunshine while ive been on nights....daughter asks if we can go visit them in derby for the weekend an i thinks great....a decent workout for the zzr....check the weather forcast and ...........POXY RAIN RAIN and MORE RAIN.

 

Gee, that sounds like what I'd say to someone in my position. I do really believe I'm not pushing or straining things unduly: I am not taking painkillers now at all and stop when somethings hurts. I will certainly bear this and the doctor's advice in mind and avoid rough hilly bits, but if I don't move around, I'll suffer! It's probably a matter of degree and being sensible. That's a problem, then! Thanks for your wise words though

 

I know that a bad experience with a monolithic organisation like the NHS can leave a bitter taste in the mouth, but I have been attending Guy's/St Thomas' Hospitals for 57 years and have never had anything but the best of service!

You could argue that after 57 years they should have sorted me out one way or the other. Unfortunately my condition is incurable (no funnies please, I've heard them all before [or not heard them as the case may be ]) so they can only prevent it worsening too quickly. The quickest response from notification to being seen to is 1 hour 15 minutes, and 40 minutes of that was travelling time!

So to all those doctors and nurses out there, you're my heroes .

 

You know when they say they are 'practising'? Perhaps you are one of those upon whom they 'practise'!