Drugs that Work

I feel like a hospital spy. April has seen me in an inordinate amount of medical situations. Most unusual, I rarely ail, but I've had a combination of sport injuries and now a bit of polyp issue. I write this from my hospital bed.  It's never a good time to get sliced open, but I'll just be an overnight case. Alpha Romeo drove me in yesterday's tantalising sunshine - it's always good to be delivered by a friend, so calms the nerves.

Mass Channel

Landlady fridge has been stocked, cost centres and gentlemen lodgers are left to their own devices for the weekend. Overnight guest rule not to be overturned one hopes.

We were still in the traffic when I got a call from the hospital checking I was on my way, and from the moment I arrived, it has been friendly and extremely efficient. Everybody listens. The theatre medics shake hands and put me at ease, my doctor reminds me again what 'we' are going to do. I drift into oblivion and awake beside a very attractive blonde nurse, Martina, assuring me all has gone well. As I resurrect into the real world we exchange life stories, a truly lovely experience, a kindness in relative fear. If the sublime contentment with life after a general anaesthetic could be bottled we'd live in a gentler world, maybe that's why the drugs are illegal, but for a few hours I enjoyed a blissful state of post-op harmony.

I'm trolleyed to the cheap seats - semi private means six beds and I've been put in the cardiac ward with five elderly ladies, only because they've no bed elsewhere. I've figured these ladies were the right age to have been in the Mad Men era, say 20 years old in 1960. What changes they've seen in Ireland - marriage ban lifted, the pill and condoms legalised, divorce, same sex marriage even and the advances in medical treatment they've received here that's sustained them, kept them alive longer.

I've had regular monitoring, blood pressure, temperature, pain relief, nice food, warm smiles, great care, in other words.

So it makes me wonder how in 2012 a young woman in a Galway hospital had to endure unnecessary suffering, left unmonitored and her young life cut short because of a conflict in religious/medical ideology.

There is a mini-tv attached to my bed, when I turn it on there are only three channels, RTE1, radio and EWTN a global religious version of CNN. I watched some of it for research of course, there was news of John Paul being canonised soon, of the third secret of Fatima and all manner of religious current affairs. I’m well aware that most of our hospitals were founded by religious orders at a time when they were much needed, but now the service is predominantly funded by the HSE, therefore the taxpaying electorate, and by our private health insurance.

The label on the long arm of the tv reads 'Mass daily at 11am on Channel 13'. Perhaps the long arm of religious influence in life-saving medical treatment should stop at the hospital door.