Heart Beat: While I clearly lack the intellectual facility of Jonathan Swift, I do share the savage indignation. In my case this derives from a lifetime experience of the Irish health service.
Scarcely a day passes without some new absurdity postulated as yet another solution. There are two initial steps. Put the beds back into the system. Talk to the working doctors and nurses and not merely to the talking heads.
Meanwhile, having doubtless put plaques on my arteries during my years in service, I will not exacerbate them by giving continuous vent to the aforementioned savage indignation. I shall put all of the above briefly on hold and take refuge in the past.
"When you look back and forgetfully wonder,
What you were like in your work and your play" - (40 Years On, Harrow School).
As a working doctor, it did not take very long for the uncritical excitement and interest of my new career to lessen in intensity. Despite being sorely tried, it never vanished completely. Had it so done, I would have lost my raison d'etre as a doctor.
Residence was obligatory for us then and I was living like my fellows in our monk-like cells in the doctors' residence. That was the only point of similarity between us and the monks. We were self contained; we had our own kitchen and dining room. We had a functional, if hardly comfortable, common room with a TV, half a dozen easy chairs (all with an ashtray screwed into the arm rest), a table and several other chairs. The latter appeared mostly for the use of the nightly poker school. There was also a kettle whose intended purpose in boiling water for coffee and tea was seldom exercised. In my experience it was used for the mulling of red wine, usually of very indifferent quality. While I am on the subject of wine, I might add that we adopted St Jodechus as the patron saint of the residence. Our knowledge of the saint was limited to the label on the wine bottles that bore his name and which, on party occasions, we stored in the large blood fridge in the laboratory.
In the days before pagers we relied on telephones, one in the corridor and one in the common room. Calls in the small hours were made by the night porter knocking on your door and passing on the message. Even in the direst emergency, nurses were not allowed call us in the residence, lest I presume an even more dire emergency might arise. Pagers did arrive in my time but had no message facility, just a tone that indicated you were to call the switchboard.
Staggering downstairs in the small hours in winter, waiting for the operator to respond, and then being told that he had inadvertently called the wrong person, severely depleted your limited stock of stoicism. Beside the phone in the corridor was a call board for your morning call time. Altering somebody's call time became, after our first month, a capital offence.
This little self-contained empire was presided over by Sr M Rosario and her staff. This lady fed us like fighting cocks, looked after us when we were ill, and treated our immature behaviour with humour and tolerance. In many small ways she made our difficult lives tolerable. Three or four times a year she provided special meals, wines included, which were simply unforgettable. I possess signed menus to this day. As is so often the way, we never told her how much we appreciated her care at the time. Belatedly, "Thank you Sister" from us all.
Let me not give the impression that we were living in the Garden of Eden and in honest retrospect it was fairly primitive. It was, however, our world. Real trouble and discontent were strangers there. The food was not always medico-politically correct and often relegated the Ulster fry to the shade, but we have mostly made it this far with this dietary Damoclean sword poised above us. Our residence was memorable and happy in that smaller world.
From this sheltered location you sallied forth to work. The Mater was the biggest voluntary hospital in Dublin at that time and was wholly owned by the Sisters of Mercy. All the ward sisters and departmental sisters were nuns. Sometimes it was like navigating by one of those old maps, with legends of "here be dragons" etched in red. We rapidly learned the danger points. You could survive some difficulties with your consultant, but trouble with the ward sister was a calamity. On the other hand, if you were prepared to listen, they could make life much easier. I became an avid listener.
We were not completely defenceless. I recall a colleague putting some thyroid tablets into the tank of tropical fish that were the pride and joy of a venerable ward sister. The fish, eyes popping out of their heads, dashed around the tank like dements, displaying all the signs of hyperthyroidism or goitre. "Whatever do you think is wrong with my fish, Doctor?" "I haven't the faintest idea, Sister."
The much feared Sister in X-ray grew palms and ferns. We cut the roots below the clay line. Much plant food was expended as they withered and died. We won the occasional skirmish; there was no question of us winning the war.
Meanwhile, it would appear the Department of Health has struck again, costing us a billion. Why am I not surprised? Maybe we could get an out-of-work PR consultant to put a proper spin on all this. Maybe if the Minister of the Kaleidoscope inquired around the Cabinet table, one of her colleagues might be able to suggest somebody?
Maurice Neligan is a cardiac surgeon