When the time came for the nurse to ring me to take my blood pressure, the phone simply didn’t ring. I was at the horses doing fencing so I checked my messages to make sure I hadn’t missed this ground-breaking event. But no, there was no voicemail saying: ‘Hello, this is the nurse calling to take your blood pressure.’
I was extremely disappointed because I had hoped my cynicism was about to be proved unfounded. There did appear to be no way a nurse could take my blood pressure over the phone. But I had sort of hoped there might be. And I think that tiny part of me that was hoping for such a daft thing was the sheep-shaped part of me that wants to trust the NHS like the other happy sheep people, despite evidence to the contrary.
In the end, water didn’t run uphill, the Earth wasn’t flat and the phone call to take my blood pressure didn’t happen. Later that day, the receptionist rang to admit that I had been right to assert she was wrong during our previous conversation about my HRT prescription, when she insisted she had to book me a phone consultation for my annual blood pressure check because the nurse who did the blood pressure testing was working from home.
The surgery looked like a Category A penitentiary or a place where mad people lived
‘It seems you do have to come in to the surgery,’ the lady said, without a flicker of embarrassment in her voice, which was at least something. I mean, I don’t want the NHS to start apologising or admitting it gets simple things drastically wrong, because that would be frightening.
So I went along with it. She booked me in for a week’s time (and I didn’t complain that this was another week-long delay to getting my medication), saying: ‘Now, when you come in you must wear your mask and come through the main doors and use the hand sanitiser.
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