Breathing Space

A pal had to go to accident and emergency yesterday. He was having trouble breathing and he suspected he had something lodged in his windpipe. He asked me to go as a translator. Perhaps his difficulty in breathing had clouded his judgement!

He was seen by a doctor inside about 15 minutes of arrival. He was taken to a cubicle with a bed after that first consultation. There were a couple of routine tests, blood samples, blood pressure, temperature and whatever it is they do when they put electrodes on your chest, hands and legs to get one of those wiggly line graphs. A few minutes later and he got a chest X-ray and then he was shifted onto an observation ward. Somebody came to do the blood pressure and temperature stuff again. This time they were a bit worried about the oxygen levels in his blood so they fastened him up to oxygen administered through one of those clip in the nostril jobs. Then it all slowed to a crawl.

The patient wasn't. He thought they were taking ages and not doing much. Impatient rather than patient. I thought it seemed pretty good. Presumably someone was looking at the various tests and deciding what to do. We'd been there about four hours, a bit less maybe, when I had to go to get to work. Before I went, they told me that my chum would be moved to a room and that they would have a look for the obstruction the next morning. I got a WhatsApp this morning from him to say that they'd taken some food out of his windpipe today.

The lunctime TV news reported that eight out of ten Spaniards are very happy with the service they get from the Spanish health system. Their main complaint is that the waiting times are too long between GP and specialist at around a month. I'd go along with the 80%.