Out of patience…

CHRIS BENNETT visits a familiar establishment…

A TIME of jittery anticipation twice a year is the week before my annual appointment with my stethoscopic minder.

I don’t know why because he is a delightful man, as good doctors tend to be, and has a most commendable interest in the origin of languages and especially alphabets.

Maybe the place of our encounters has more to do with my fears: the provincial hospital in Port Shepstone, a place for which, although I have gratitude, I do not have excessive fondness.

As I am only too aware of the patience I shall need I arm myself with a book (in this case Lawrence Durrell’s Prospero’s Cell) and, if possible, a Zulu speaking friend: the latter because I feign deafness when confronted with nightmare English.

The arrival at the hall of eternity, where much, though not all, the waiting is done, is like entering the scene of a comedy written jointly by John Cleese and one of those German chaps whose sense of humour got lost in translation.

It is this point that the coward in me draws itself up to its not inconsiderable height: I leave my friend to occupy a chair and I go out and read Durrell.

After and hour or more I am lost in the fascinating but bewildering history of the Ionian island of Corfu, the island some scholars believe to have been the setting for the turbulent scenes of the Tempest, by Master Shakespeare. Bewildering because no researcher can entirely ignore the myths intertwined with ancient Greek gods and seemingly endless wars.

My phone jerks me back to the awesome reality of my situation. I am required to present myself for blood curdling tests and to be enmeshed in wiring so that greater minds that this may assess my trembling heart.

This time there is no avoiding the waiting so out comes the phone and I retreat into patience, the card game.

When my turn comes round the sun shines, and I am confronted by a small, very smartly uniformed motherly figure.

In no time this delightful woman has unburdened me of enough blood to test for all mentionable maladies and some quite unmentionable.

This is followed by the electro-cardiogram, during the preparation for which we strike up conversation. It soon transpires that this hospital is serious short of nurses. There appears to be a number of reasons, not the list of which is the temptation to work in the private sector where there is, needless to say, more money.

That explained the overcrowded waiting areas. One wonders where the real problem lies.

Next up was the fiddly business of blood pressure and weight and, just for good measure, height. Both of these last operations are carried out on a measuring contraption seemingly borrowed from a museum of medical history.

The encounter with the great man himself was, as always, both efficient and pleasant, which made me wonder if the hospital's woes were not perhaps more to do with management style than anything else.

We are lucky to have staff as hard working and willing as nurses are. They should not have to work, though, under these pressures. They show remarkable strength and patience.

By the way, in case you were wondering, I was at the hospital for nine hours.