It was a week ago that my local GP’s practice referred me to Lucy Letby’s old stomping ground, the Countess of Chester for an appraisal of what we know is a cateract in my right eye. I received an email on the NHS app which I use telling me that I would be told a date by 22 December, i.e within a couple of months. Or if the Shipmans were too busy to let me know I was to call them after the 22nd to give them a nudge.
For some reason I was checking my app last night and the message had disappeared. Had there been some sort of blunder? Rather panicking, I called the GP’s surgery and after a while the receptionist put me through to a very helpful lady who assured me that I was still on the NHS system but would I like for the NHS to pay for me to go private? You bet I did. I passed the tests of having a BMI of less than 40 ( can anyone really be that fat?) and having no mental health issues. And now I have that initial appointment in less than three weeks which, God willing, will mean surgery by Christmas.
And it does not cost me a cent. Whereas going private myself, which I had considered, would have cost me up to four thousand quid an eye. I am delighted by it all. But I wonder about why I was not fast tracked straight away? If the private johnnies have a slate of free appointments (I was given a big choice) just a few weeks away why isn’t the NHS sending far more folks there to clear its own waiting lists. Why are the private johnnies so efficient but the NHS seems to take forever?
Questions and more questions. But something just does not seem right about how this whole system works at what is “the envy of the world.”