Rev's blog: "WTF?"

I love Scotland's National Health Service, I really do.

For the past few weeks I've had problems with my right eye - some swelling and an itchy irritation. It wasn't giving me too much cause for concern as I have hayfever, and it just felt like a bad dose of that. I'd tried hayfever eye-drops, but to no avail. This isn't unusual because, despite what it says on the commercial, these things don't always work for everyone. My anti-histamines had no real effect either, but again this isn't unusual for me. Normally when I get a bad dose of hayfever I just have to grin and bear it.

Anyhoo - I woke up at around 4:30am this morning with a burning pain in my eye. When I tried to open it, I found I couldn't. I went to the bathroom to check it out in the mirror and discovered that it had swollen to the size of a golf ball. When I forced my eyelids opened with my fingers (which was fuckin agony) I discovered my eye was almost totally red and so swollen that it looked like it was sticking out of my socket. I took a couple of pain killers, which kinda helped, and waited until 8:30am when my doctor's office is open to recieve calls for an emergency appointment. I got an appointment for 9:40am - an hour and ten minutes later!

I get to the doc's and only have to wait 10 minutes after my appointed time to be seen. The doc examined my eye and said that it looked like I had an infection, but there was a 'growth' under my eyelid. She said that the growth appeared to be a swollen blood vessel and nothing to worry about, but she couldn't tell for sure due to the swelling. She prescribed eye drops for me, which are both antibiotic and anti-inflammatory. It's now around 3 and a half hours since I applied the eye drops and there is already a marked difference. The swelling has gone down CONSIDERABLY. I can now open and close my eyelids no problem, vision has returned to my eye (if somewhat blurry) and the redness is all but gone. So, it looks like it's just an infection, time will tell, but I'm not worried about it.

The cost of this to me? £3. That's THREE UK POUND STERLING - the standard cost of prescriptions in Scotland. No waiting, no fucking about, no insurance companies involved, no expense what-so-ever - I FUCKING LOVE THE NHS!

Sure, it isn't perfect. Sure it has it's problems. But it really fucking pisses me off when people in the UK only look at the negative and use it to belittle and devalue what is an amazing service. It also pisses me off when people focus on the negatives in the USA and use these as ammunition when arguing against socialised health care in the USA.

The good carried out by the NHS and it's hardworking, tireless and selfless staff far outweighs the bad shit. The good stuff should be shouted from the fucking rooftops. Anyone entitled to use this service should be singing it's fucking praises. Unconstructive criticism about how the service is funded, how procedures and drugs are allocated and about the red tape bogging the service down serves no purpose what-so-ever, except to dishearten it's staff and to tarnish it's reputation.

Did I mention that I FUCKING LOVE THE NHS!