Personal Blogs

Being offline for seven hours was the least of the unpleasantness.

Being put straight into one of those back-to-front gowns wasn't encouraging, though it has its compensations, I was seen with two minutes of arriving. The experience of the A & E was fine, it was the need to endure in considerable pain for six hours until the matter could be resolved.

I had the iPad but had no desire to do anything (not permitted in any case).

Behind the curtain I listen in as a distraction, it was the first day for at least two members of staff. (I could name them and run through the symptoms of several of the morning's intake too).

As another distraction I thought about efforts to introduce hand held devices to hospitals in 2000, various case studies from PDAs in 2005 (total failure) as well as Yrjo Engestrom's 'activity systems' studies of hospitals in Helsinki.

I was politely asked by the Consultant if I could be discussed with his student doctor once she had seen me and come to a diagnosis, so they talked about me, not as if a I wasn't there but the way we parents can talk about our children even when they're sitting in the back of the car. I was humoured politely when I said what fascinated me was the expert/learner relationship and the nature of the conversation (I heard both what they discussed within earshot AND what was said around the hub - everyone was eager to learn and share today).

I desired taking a picture of the poster that shows how to identify staff; I got the all, from the staff assistant, through nurse, matron, doctor and consultant.

In due course I'll reflect on where I came within the activity system, surely as I was mostly the 'subject' or a mediating artefact? NHS Direct website, then a phone call first to them and my GP confirmed my self-diagnosis. Plenty of checks in case of other possibilities were confirmed at hospital. Between being seen by the staff matron and a doctor there was a three hour delay that almost reduced me to tears. Once diagnosed there was another hour.

The procedure itself took half an hour, the hideousness of it endured by concentrating on something else - I relived a gap year of 30 years ago during which I came to know every piste and off-piste ski run at Val d'Isere / Tignes.