'Popping in' to Frenchay.

I have to take the baby to Bristol again on Monday 'so we can have a look at her' and then again on Tuesday for an skin graft.

Getting to Bristol is a sod for me - Jim can't drive and is such a mess at the moment that she really needs me there for this, I have two other daughters that need looking after and take to school, I can't keep asking people to drive Jim about if they want to change dressings every two days (seriously, yesterday we had to go all the way to Bristol because they don't have the dressings with silver in them anywhere else this side of Gloucester - for my mother this meant driving 200miles with us, and another 60 miles just to get to us from her home).

There is (obviously) a limit to how much time Jim and I can take off work without it becoming an issue (Jim works from home, so her hours are very flexible, but at the moment all our time is taken up with this - which is fair enough - and being able to pop into the local hospital, a pretty major hospital and in the capital city of the second largest county in the UK, to get dressings changed would be nice) and I can't imagine I am alone in this. With this in mind I asked:

'There must be other people in a similar situation to me?'
"Yes, we get this sort of thing every day, it is a real problem for a lot of people."
'What do people usually do then?'
"Struggle".

Why have the pre-op consultation the day before when you know that most of your patients are having this sort of problem? Why in the name of all that is holy do these specialist burns dressings (at least one or two) not exist in Exeter?

Jim left the RD&E hospital at 1230hrs yesterday and got to Bristol Frenchay at 1735hrs - if you can't drive it's not just an inconvenience, it's a nightmare.

'Can you pop in so the consultant can take another look?'

No, I can't 'pop in', I can spend £100 travelling and let down work (who are very good about this sort of this) and the days of two other people to collect one child and look after the other and do it, and of course I will, because it's my baby we are talking about, but 'popping in' isn't an option when I'm a hundred miles away and the breast feeding mother cannot drive.

How about, next time, the consultant takes a proper look the first time?

/Manley bitching blog.

I just stirred my fish tank with a chopstick and Bruce is in heaven, he seems to think that the dirt from the stones in his tank are cocaine, by the looks of him.

I weigh 192.6lbs.

=================
I am having a poo
=================

I weigh 191lbs.

I am also very, very stressed.