22 - Some Time in Hospital

Recently, I was obliged to spend some 2 and a half weeks as a guest of Naas General Hospital. I have to say it was an educational and sobering experience.  No power, no Internet, no water. I was admitted on a wet, windy, and the worse storm in the night - Storm Éowyn - in late January, via their A&E department, where gallstones were the eventual diagnosis. To their lasting credit, it was the doctors in Naas Hospital’s A&E who made this diagnosis.

We were taught in medical school that gallstones were almost exclusive to overweight females in their 40s – fare, fat, fertile, flatulent and forty we were told were typical of the profile of a gallstone sufferer. I was none of these things. One of the tiny stones got stuck in the common bile duct and hence the emergency and hospital.

One of the first things I noticed when taking in my surroundings on the ward was that it was mixed gender. I actually worked in Naas Hospital as a final year medical student in the sixties under the guidance of the infamous Jack Gibson. At that time, the Hospital was run by nuns. To these gentle souls, the very idea of men and women being cared for on the same ward would have caused collective apoplexy. How times have changed.

Another thing I noticed on taking in my surroundings was the number of very old people occupying beds, though not actually receiving any active treatment. I hate to say it, but these people belonged to nursing homes or long-term care facilities and not to active treatment hospitals like Naas. This is an old and ongoing problem that the Minister of Health needs to tackle once and for all. Not in a piecemeal fashion but as a permanent solution such as means-tested free health insurance.

Because of obstructing stones in my common bile duct, they could not deal with this in Naas Hospital. So, I was eventually shipped out to Vincent's Private Hospital, in the cold night as a late patient admitted 9pm, where open abdominal surgery solved the problem. It was not easy. I would not wish it on my worst enemy. But what needs must, and all’s well that ends well. Thank you all.

Left: A kind nurse improvised a standing prop for my phone to watch from. Ireland's Own magazine for reading.

Right: A view from the floor level I was on - the Dollymount towers and the Irish Sea.