Fandom random

[liv]

Another brief link update post, because I'm note quite squeezing all of my life into the available hours at the moment, but here are things more people should see.

There's a meme going round where you take a fandom and pick people you'd have various kinds of interactions with, if the characters existed in your mundane life. A bit like an extended version of shag-marry-cliff, I suppose. Well, sovay and nineweaving have been doing this with Shakespeare characters, which I thought some of you might appreciate.

Also, vorkosigan is trying to play Sorting Hat with the saga characters. Leading to some really nice, detailed meta about both Vorkosiverse and the Harry Potter houses.

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I probably shouldn't put on Twitter that I spent the night in A&E without expanding at greater than 140 characters length. Primarily, I am perfectly fine, honest, it was just a minor mishap. Which means that it's a thankfully not terribly interesting story.

I burned my arm taking a dish out of the oven, and an hour later it was looking a bit scary, so I answered the questions on the lovely NHS Direct app, and it said "go to A&E", and I was like, seriously, how much do I not want to be in A&E on bonfire night? So I phoned the helpline, and they went through the same questions as the app and came up with the same answer, but allowing me to elaborate rather than just ticking the boxes. So I thought, I probably ought to show my face just to be a good citizen.

An American friend on Twitter asked me "what's A&E?" The answer is that the straight translation is "the Emergency Department", but A&E is really not equivalent due to the fact that this country has the NHS. In particular there are no financial implications to showing up just in case when you're not sure if what's wrong with you is bad enough to justify it.

The place was busy but not frenetic. I talked to the receptionist who asked more bureaucratic questions than seemed strictly necessary, including full contact details for me and my next-of-kin. I'm not sure I'd have been happy with that if I'd been in serious pain or terror. Then I waited about 10 minutes to see a triage nurse, who agreed that I probably could get away with just going home again and being a bit careful not to knock the burn, but that on balance I might as well see the emergency consultant for a dressing. He said that wait times were about 2 hours, so I settled down to wait. Since it was a fairly slowly unfolding emergency, I'd had time to make sure I had something to read. In fact I was called through to the consulting ward after not much over an hour.

Doctor was very much the stereotypical emergency medicine type. Perfectly friendly and nice, but also extremely brisk and to the point, she didn't waste even a single word on small talk or fluff. She sent me a nurse who applied a dressing and a bandage to protect the burn from knocks and the actual treatment phase was over in less than 5 minutes.

jack is staying with me at the moment, and he was stalwartly supportive! He helped convince me that I should in fact get myself seen to even if it's inconvenient, and was patient when the pain and being annoyed with myself were making me a bit grumpy. And since I live right next door to the hospital, I was able to send him home to fetch me an insulated mug of tea and some paracetamol while we were waiting. Plus he provided company the rest of the time. And he spoke up to ask the nurse about painkillers when she was busy being efficient and might have sent me home without a chance to ask any questions. Actually I was pretty sure that the right thing to do was to just take OTC painkillers, but it was comforting to have someone with me to help me to be assertive in case I was in fact feeling too bustled to ask the questions I needed to ask.

So in short, that really could have been a lot worse, and the NHS has done me proud in several respects.

Comments

[jack]

*hugs* I know I talked about this, but I assume they do in fact fast-track past the paperwork if you're obviously not able to stand up for it.

[pseudomonas]

I think if you look like you can't stand up, they tend to put you in a wheelchair.

[beckyc]

And if you can't breathe at all, you go straight onto a bed with an oxygen mask on your face.

You still have to wait your turn at that point, but it's usually less than an hour.

[deborah_c]

As I discovered earlier this year, getting taken in by ambulance with chest pains also largely bypasses the paperwork...

[angelofthenorth]

Glad you're ok, I was wondering.
Yay for the NHS!

[forestofglory]

It's so easy to burn yourself taking things out of the oven. I do that rather too often. Glad you are ok.

[ceb]

Glad you're OK!

:-)

[(Anonymous)]

How convenient to live not too far from a hospital and be able, therefore, to drink real tea not machine cups of dirty water. Well done hubbie. Glad you're okay.