Who would be a nurse?

I spent yesterday 0900 - 1600 sitting in a blue backless gown with the needle in a vein waiting to get into surgery in the Cardiac day ward of the University Hospital Galway. All I can say is the nurses do some job they are under constant pressure to free up beds by admin staff while they are monitoring folks just out of surgery and prepping others to go in to surgery. They are pushing around beds and trying to explain rudimentary stuff to junior doctors, well I presume they are junior anyway as they seem pretty clueless, the one I had was the reason I was there all day.

Almost finished the novel I started at 0900, its one of those that would normally have me snoring after two pages but as is the way if you keep reading a book sometimes they are better than if you just read a couple of pages before falling asleep, what I should do next time is actually take a pen and paper and write my own novel in the waiting section.

The reason they did not do surgery yesterday is that I still have a chest full of flem from the cold I got weeks ago now when my parents where over, Dad is blaming the cold on me and I am blaming it on him. Replacing the ICD has more risk of infection than doing the initial whole operation but it took the surgeon explaining this to me and my comment about my cold for the thing to be picked up, now I know I should have said something early in the piece but surely a Dr in an operating day care prep room should have known, especially as I was having the occasional coughing fit and a bit of a temperature.

So big praises for the nurses who never stopped and are probably on half the wages of the Dr bloke who just seemed to swan around and write up a few forms. My nurse Denise said that I was one of the most patient patients she had had ( liked that repeating words there) so I bettered my chances of getting a cup of tea next time by telling her I thought "nurses are brilliant, under payed and over worked Angels and the last thing they need is whinging patients." She looked extremely pleased.   

The next attempt is on the 27th of this month and I am on a course of penicillin for the next 5 days, have you ever read the side effects of some of these drugs? my face and mouth may swell up, fever, joint pain, indigestion, dizziness, headache, diarrhea, convulsions, hyperactivity, inflammation of the liver, jaundice, and my favorite "Black hairy tongue".  Cant wait.