In Good Company: Private Patients
Enid Blackburn visited a friend in a pay-for-your-treatment hospital.
My favourite hospital status is ‘just visiting’ and I’ve done my share of queuing outside the swing doors under the ‘No Entry’ sign.
The only private hospital rooms I ever entered were by courtesy of TV, attended by the inimitable intern, Dr blue-eyed Kildare. His naked sunburned elbows raised my blood count unbearably on countless Saturday nights.
Depending on how ill one is, of course, private rooms sound a little isolated. Or so I thought until I recently endured the long playing voice in the bed opposite a patient I visited. Compulsive chatterers have their value, admittedly. Had I been ill her voice would have had me on my feet, ready for home in no time.
I had a chance to sample the esoteric atmosphere of a private nursing home, where a friend underwent a minor operation.
As our car entered the unlit drive at an angle of 45deg (snow has no priorities) the dark building with its drawn curtains looked quite small and insignificant. Inside the silent foyer, with its picture-lined, immaculately scrubbed marble staircase, well-groomed plants were blooming healthily. A smartly dressed receptionist greeted us, not a nurse or uniform in sight.
On the way to Yvonne’s room we could see small supper trays set out on the sparkling steel in an empty, equally silent kitchen.
Her room was like a diminutive hotel room; colour TV bedside telephone buzzer, toilet facilities through a teak door, wardrobe through another. Reminding me of gangster films where the brave ‘tec grabs his clothes as soon as nurse’s back is turned.
We greeted our patient through a haze of tears, she was inhaling under a towel at the time. It smelled quite poisonous, but the fumes cleared eventually. We dried our eyes and enjoyed a refreshing breathe in. While the three male visitors swooned over Kevin Keegan as they gathered together on the cocoa-coloured bedspread, we gentler sex perused some Christmas party photos, where ladies were dressed as vicars, and men wore tights and dresses.
It seemed strange not having to hide when nurse answered the buzzer, but three a bed does not apply here. We were even invited to coffee, which before I could open my mouth husband politely refused.
Not having a row of beds opposite cuts out the opening gambit, ‘What’s she in for?’ There was the usual hospital-type radio – no sound and on the locker stood a vacuum flask of iced water.
A typical dinner menu was mushroom vol-au-vent, jacket potatoes, green beans, carrots and rhubarb crumble to follow.
Speaking as a fully paid up member of the NHS, it does make one realise what it costs to keep a patient in hospital, ‘not to mention a prisoner in prison,’ as someone else added.
Money does buy priority, it does shorten the queue, but when you eventually reach the National Health bed, one consolation is, although it may be noisier – treatment is just the same!
