The hospital has a bed shortage (it is, after all, the middle of July). As usual, all other management activity ceases amid hysterical attempts to slip patients having major bowel resections onto our day-surgery unit.
At the same time, CMO Liam Donaldson is reassuring everyone that we’re “well-placed” to deal with the flu pandemic. Yeah, right. So long as it only involves one patient, who doesn’t need ITU, and not, of course, over a weekend. Or after 5 O’clock.
Setting aside for the moment the fact we haven’t got any spare beds unless we cancel elective surgery, (which is so unthinkable that I can barely bring myself to type the words), the situation is exacerbated by the fact that we won’t actually have any staff.
Apparently, to avoid swamping GPs’ surgeries - the last thing you should do if you feel ill is to go to your doctor, who has far more important things to do and, anyway, might catch something - patients will be able to sign themselves off for two weeks without a doctor’s note.
Carte blanche, the cynics among us might be tempted to think, for anyone with a tendency to feeling a bit lethargic to have a duvet fortnight.
Meanwhile, the hospital has been attempting to fit everyone with flu-virus repelling surgical facemasks. The fitting process, which involves donning a large hood and looking so ludicrous that, frankly, a mild dose of flu is probably preferable, excludes anyone with significant facial hair, and those with “unusual” lower facial contours - two groups which mysteriously seem to contain many of the same individuals.
Given the current failure rate, and since I have no beard (yet, although my mother did recently ask me, when she thought no one else was listening, if I had ever considered waxing), I fear I will be the only person in the hospital able to care for flu sufferers should any be allowed to access medical care.
To cap it all, we are also told by a group of government advisors, who I suspect may be London-based, that if the flu epidemic reaches expected proportions, the UK could “grind to a halt” - the two areas particularly singled out are the London Underground and Broadband internet access.
Neither prospect really presses my panic button, partly because, like 90% of the population, my need for the Underground is geographically limited. As for Broadband, I only got it two years ago, so I retain my skills of picking up a telephone, and going to a library to look something up in a book.
So, what’s my plan? Things are looking quite serious as I read the news of two of the latest deaths. Plan A: emigrate to the Outer Hebrides. Rejected this on the grounds that I’d probably go mad in about 6 minutes. Plan B: do what we British do best. Keep calm and carry on.
The summer holidays are coming up, and surely even a flu virus wouldn’t be presumptious enough to mutate while politicians are enjoying their low-budget, recession-friendly holidays in Rhyl as prescribed by Messers Brown and Cameron?
By September the men in white coats may have come up with a vaccine, and the hospital’s 18-week elective surgery target will be saved. As, incidentally, will we.
