A strange patient.

My paternal grandparents

 

There can’t be anything more telling of old age when conversations focus on ‘sicknesses’ ‘food’ and the ‘cost of electricity.’ I plead guilty to all three of them so my age is showing. But I had a rather unusual experience yesterday in a Doctor’s waiting room. Actually, the term ‘Doctor’s waiting room’ is dated. We now go to ‘Medical Centres’. They are mainly owned by large corporations who employ PhD trained business experts  in maximising returns on investments. The sick and frail now have to travel to those centres. It is rare for the doctor to visit the patient at home.

I had an appointment at 7.45 am to a medical centre’s pathology facility for a thyroid blood test which I haven’t had for a long time. I was amazed how many were already at this centre. There is a waiting room with 27 chairs, all padded and soft-backed with arm-rests. On the floor in one corner it even had a small play- centre for kids. It had a doll’s house and a mini slippery-dip.

During my waiting, several mainly elderly patients shuffled inside, some struggling with walking frames or other mobility aids. One mother with a pram like a WW1 tank manoeuvred around a man who had to keep one leg straight out because it was all plastered up to his thigh.

When my number came up for the blood test, I got up but stopped at the desk as a man had just walked in to tell the receptionist his wife had sent him to see a doctor.

My wife wants me to see a doctor but I also need 10 Dollars. Can you give me 10 dollars, please, he said politely. The man was neatly dressed and possibly in his late sixties or even seventies. He wore black knee socks , shorts and gym shoes. I would never wear knee-socks let alone black ones, but this is a very English type village. A foreign language is hardly ever heard except in week-ends when we receive many tourists.

The receptionists, a youngish woman, told the man she would consult her superior. Yes, but could you please give me 10 dollars now, he said again. The receptionist now somewhat alarmed asked the man if he wanted to see a doctor. Yes, I do, he said, but could you please give me 10 dollar, I am so hungry! Well, just sit down and doctor will see you. At this stage the man walked to a chair and sat down.

I had my blood test done and as I walked out I saw the black knee-socked man still waiting. I don’t know what happened or if he got the 10 dollars. Maybe one of the patients or even the staff had given him some food. It was all rather strange. If his wife sent him to the doctor, could she not have given him breakfast? Why would a neatly dressed man go without food and go to a medical centre to beg for money?

I went bowling afterwards and told the story to the wife of one bowler. She said that many people do go hungry and that poverty in Australia is now widespread. She had a friend who volunteers and drives a van picking up bread and food from the local supermarkets to be distributed to the different agencies that feed the poor and hungry.

A recent ABC TV segment was about the abuse that many elderly suffer in old age care homes. Apparently between 4000 and 6000 elderly die well before their time each year in Australia through neglect in those Aged Care facilities. Many are owned and run by churches. Astonishingly, we were told that there are no qualification required to work in aged care. Most that died pre-maturely were murdered, suicided or just through lack of basic care while in expensive ‘Aged Care’.

What awaits us while shuffling forever onwards towards the promised Pearly Gates?

Troubles of the inlet flexible Toilet metal Valve, Sex for the Aged.

“Once you double thread the plastic inlet valve you’ve buggered it up”, the plumber cheerfully informed me. The whole week-end was taken up by trying to fix a pesky leak around the toilet bowl. I got fed up being accused of miss-aiming. Worse, I was accused of ‘old man’s dribble’. Can you believe this? ‘How come it is only wet around the upstairs loo’, I retorted. ‘That’s because you go upstairs during the day and downstairs during the night’.  ‘I fail to see what night and day have to do with it’, I feebly defended. It was hopeless and I should have known better. The lack of logic was appalling.

After several tries with a spanner and multi-grips with the bathroom in full flood I gave up and next day called a plumber. It is of course useless to call a plumber on Sunday. I tried and remembered Woody Allen saying. ‘Not only do I not believe in a God, but try and get a plumber on Sunday.’ The plumber turned up on Monday and spotted the fault within seconds, “the plastic thread has been double threaded on the inlet valve” he told me, but without directly accusing me of one of the most common plumbers diagnostic observations. He was canny enough and knew exactly on which side his bread was buttered.

Were you as heartened as I was that sex and the aged are now seen as essential as walking sticks or laxatives. I could not believe that ABC TV on Q&A a couple of nights ago,  featured the minister for immigration wholeheartedly supporting the idea of erring on the side of the aged including demented or Alzheimer suffering patients or clients allowing (in an emergency) sex workers to bring joy to those still getting the odd twinge or so. It is nice to know that in a future not all that far away we all in our final dotage will be well catered for in that section of ageing gracefully.Some of us can’t wait for a bit of light hand relief or some honest face sitting in case of our sexual needs still surfacing at times. There is still so much to look forward to.

It was the Kelly O’Dwyer, the ultimate conservative throwing cold water on the excitable supportive audience by going on endlessly about how “we all should ‘tread carefully’ and act ‘very carefully’, be very ‘careful etc”, on this issue. What can you expect from an ultra conservative Member of Parliament with such a ridiculous seat named ‘Higgins”?

Just to finish off.  I read that the funeral business in the US is in dire straits. With the advent of flu shots the number corpses have dried up and dying is not what it was a while ago. Embalmers are jobless and forced to seek employment elsewhere. A great pity because, sooner or later, the dying will come back and the art of a good embalming job will be lost. Some of the smaller funeral businesses have been taken over by multi corporate giants. They can buy coffins in bulk, share facilities, crematoriums, embalmers etc. A good embalmer in the past could call his price. He would study the corpse, chin held caringly in one hand like an architect contemplating a future opera house.

The funeral industry wasn’t helped by a Court case in San Francisco where it was alleged a corpse had coughed and someone claimed to have caught fatal pathogens from it, suing the Funeral Company for millions. Experts were called in denying that that risk existed. Passing wind, yes, that happens frequently especially during transfers and bumpy car rides from hospitals, mortuaries, coroners, but coughing is not possible and passing wind does not carry dangerous pathogens. Very often funerals are now with as little fan fare as possible. The profits are being squeezed and in about 12% ashes are not even claimed. It is all part of a throw away culture.

The art of death is not alive as it used to be.