Holby Shitty – Part 2

Now I don’t know if you’ve ever had your eye irrigated, but it’s like someone reaching in to your very soul to grab your insides and jiggle them about a bit. I’m not particularly squeamish about eyes, having worn contacts for years, and then having them lasered, but this was something else.

The nurse’s fingers poked and prodded my very sensitive eye socket as the best part of a litre of saline poured its way down my face, whilst she shouted at me like a demented Jeremy Paxman to move my eyes around.

She left me dripping, trying to wring my hair out in the sink, with a wet shoulder and what can only be described as incontinence pads stuck down the back of my jumper while I waited for a doctor.

I took in my surroundings for the first time, albeit in a one-eyed piratey fashion – including the fetching dirty salmon walls, the kind of pink only reserved for dull classrooms built in the ’70s.

There were moans coming from behind curtains, tired-looking nurses shuffling their plimsoles across the linoleum, and a rather angry gentleman threatening to piss on the floor.

I waited for another two hours before a clearly-terribly-busy doctor took a quick look in my eye and said I could go home after getting some drops.

Cue another 30 minutes as I waited, to be told that they hadn’t actually got any left. Good job I didn’t need a kidney really.

I have a great deal of respect for our health system. Our hospital’s doctors and nurses do a great job in some grim conditions, and they’re clearly overworked, underpaid and even abused by patients.

But as I trudged my way out, I could only think of one thing.

The BBC lied to me. This was nothing like Holby City at all.

Read the first installment: Holby Shitty – Part 1

Image by acne courtesy of Flickr