My close shave - 6am razor attack in a Spanish hospital to die for

I was asleep when a chink of light  in the doorway alerted me. A man had entered Room 114.

A 6am intruder! The last thing I wanted on top of the angina attack that had put me in Torrevieja Hospital for four days and counting. Particularly with only a flimsy regulation-blue hospital gown for protection.
As I lay on the bed, squinting blearily into the darkness, the glint of metal told me the shadowy silhouette was on a business call.
He sat down on the bed - and  I realised he was brandishing two razors in his right hand.
My worst fears were confirmed. I was about to be shaved of my last vestige of dignity…by, of all people, the camp male nurse I had silently dubbed Dapper Diego.
I hadn’t the heart to protest as DD lifted my gown and, humming quietly, went to work. Donna’s pube train was at the sharp end of a potential disaster - and my only thought was that Diego might not mind the gap.
Five minutes later, the plucked chicken with the dicky ticker was ready for her heart-to-heart with the stentist later in the day.
More than 12 hours later as it happens. But of course, Torrevieja Hospital, like just about everyone in Spain, does everything manana.
Anyway, I eventually ended up at the mercy of  the guy whose job is to ping balloons into clogged up coronary channels. It sounds like a children’s party – and it might as well have been from the way the medical team laughed and joked their way through the entire procedure.
There was I, lying there with a catheter invading half my body via a gaping hole in  my femoral artery, and they were all cackling away in Spanish like kids playing doctors with a doll.
I certainly didn’t find it funny…though their trivialisation of it all did admittedly ease my own fears that my life was in danger.
Stentist? It was more like a dentist working upside down after administering laughing gas to himself and his staff.
That all happened last Wednesday – nine days ago. And you’ve only heard a fraction of the story.

The previous Saturday, my house guest Mike had to perform the old 112 and call the emergency services when I suffered an angina attack. Minutes later, I was in the back of an ambulance roaring down the N332 at 140kph with Vettel Mickey screeching behind in his rented Ford Ka.
I was about to receive proof – if any was needed – that the Spanish health service leaves the NHS standing. Even if it does seem to work at half the speed.
Torrevieja Hospital is a magnificent building with magnificent facilities …a credit to Spanish medicine in the 21st century.
That was evident from the moment I set foot – or rather wheels – on the premises.
I was whisked through the emergency admission process in a matter of minutes…with a slight hiccup when doctors discovered the handful of different medications Mike had grabbed from my bedroom drawer weren’t mine!
Assessed and then herded into a 32-bed observation ward, I shared the following eight hours with an array of characters of various nationalities in various states of discomfort.
Only an obligatory bland, salt-free apology for lunch eased the boredom. Plus the hope that I would be discharged later that day.
I suspect that is what the doctors intended because I was the only patient in the ward not to receive an evening meal.
Mind you, that changed big-time when the nurses got word of the poor starving waif in bed C-21.
They hunted around and unwittingly brought me a magnificent fully-flavoured meal that had clearly been intended for a non-coronary patient. Salt of the earth, those nurses!
For the next five days, home was a comfortable, modern en suite room of my own. And for me, Torrevieja is right up there with any British private hospital - with the exception, of course, that you don’t pay five-star hotel prices.
You get a much better view, too. Tourists would pay good money for the glorious panorama from Room 114 across the salt lake. Picture postcard stuff, particularly at night when the glow of lights on the far shore flickered on the water.
And in Dr Piotr Chochowski, I had the most caring of cardiologists. I’ve lots more to say  - but the main thing this week is that I’m not yet ready to cash in on my Golden Leaves funeral plan.
And since the whole episode did not cost me a cent, I still have considerably more money than stents.


Published in The Courier (www.thecourier.es) 18-11-2011

England’s hospital car-park scam is beyond a sick joke

Hospital stays: My granddaughter Daisy

Last summer I spent four days in Elche Hospital as a guest of the Spanish health service – and my only complaint was that the food was inedible. I bet you’d also cringe at the thought of a salad or bowl of clear soup devoid of a single grain of salt.

I’ve sucked tastier water from a dishcloth than the ultra-bland consommé the nurse plonked in front of me as an aperitif to my menial first meal as a patient.

There was method in that Friday afternoon madness, of course. Because I was in a coronary ward and I do have angina. But even my acutely health-conscious daughter has been unable to convince me that I’m shortening my life by going condimental before I tuck in. I do make one concession to the medical experts, mind you – I NEVER put salt on my dessert.

In the event, I was discharged from hospital the following Monday three kilos lighter after passing my medical tests with flying blood pressure (another abysmal Donna attempt at humour – my BP was actually normal, thanks to the medication I’ve been taking for the past five years). I couldn’t wait for my first taste of freedom and dreamt of ending my enforced diet with a portion of salt- and-pepper ribs and a salt-beef sandwich. Maybe with a packet of liquorice ‘all-salts’ for afters.

But I digress. This article is not meant to be a complaint about Spanish hospitals – or the heartless way they feed their cardiac patients. There was certainly precious little else I could moan about as a patient at Elche. A cosy two-bed ward, caring nurses, highly efficient doctors, caring nurses and four days of intensive Spanish lessons for free.

Last but not least, my friends were not charged a single centimo to come and visit me. And from what I can gather from friends on expatforum.com the same free-parking policy operates at Spanish hospitals  from Malaga to Lorca and from Denia to Villajoyosa.

How different to the money-grabbing English system of ripping off the motorist at every opportunity. Particularly at hospitals and, even more so, airports (which I’ll get to in a future article).

My 11-year-old granddaughter Daisy suffers from Crohn’s Disease and has spent quite a bit of time at Manchester’s ultra-modern Royal Children’s Hospital this past couple of years. The kindly local NHS Trust have a voucher system that allows close relatives to visit sick children to use the vast multi-storey car park at a special daily rate of £5.

That’s £35 a week to spend time with your own kids when they need you most. How generous!

And don’t tell me the money all goes to improve the NHS. In a country where every working person pays an ever-increasing National Insurance contribution, surely NO-ONE should have to pay to visit a suffering relative.

Scotland and Wales abolished hospital parking charges a couple of years ago – so what’s so different about England? The authorities are just greedier to make bigger profits, that’s all.

As my daughter Hayley Beckman (Daisy’s mother) says: ‘‘The new hospital is very modern but it’s difficult to get to compared to the two children’s hospitals it replaced, and much more expensive to park.

‘‘It’s absolutely disgraceful that parents have to pay to spend time with their sick children in hospital.’’

It’s not as if Manchester Children's University Hospital NHS Trust is in dire financial straits. Indeed, a Daily Mirror investigation established that in 2007, the Trust made a profit of £1,338,694. And 218 hospitals around the country made a staggering £24,993,855 the same year - just by charging their own staff to park their cars.

At the time, Juliet Dunmur, chair of the British Medical Association Patient Liaison Group, said: ‘‘The car-parking fees charged by some NHS trusts are unacceptable. It amounts to a tax on vulnerable patients and on NHS staff.’’

And hospital visiting is an increasingly-expensive experience. Recent research by the Action for Sick Children charity revealed that parking for families of children now costs £1.75 an hour on average.

It’s bad enough in Manchester, but at two London hospitals the parking tariff works out at an unbelievable £386.40 a week because there are no discounts for long-term stays.

At many hospitals, it’s not just visitors who get stung. Nurses working at Royal Manchester Children’s Hospital must pay £20 for a weekly car-park pass – or leave their cars a mile or more away.

Still, there is a consolation. With all that enforced walking, they can afford to pour oodles of salt on their food and never worry about getting a dicky heart.