Emotion on show.

I was at the hospital the other day and because the NHS is a slow lumbering beast I was sat for ages and ages in the waiting room. Waiting rooms generally are quite strange places, usually full of old copies of National Geographic, Hello magazine and Hamster Breeders Weekly and even if they're not, then there is often a TV to watch. Most people stare gormlessly at the TV if its on, regardless of what it is showing - that's no reflection on the type of clinic people are waiting for, its just that TV can be hypnotic like that (even if it is showing some wild daytime programme like Celebrity In The Attic Tells All To An Audience Before Auctioning It). Anyway, unusually, on this day, the TV was off and there were no magazines to sit and read and I was amazed to note that people actually started to talk to each other.

There were a couple of clinics on that afternoon and about half the waiting room (its a big room) was full of (mostly women) waiting for the breast clinic. Its an awful wonderful clinic, full of many, many people whose emotions are so close to the surface and to me, that made it even more unusual that they had started chatting. It was so busy as well, not a seat to spare and I noticed that several of the people were looking around, and it seemed to me that they were wondering who was with who. Some were obvious - the lady with the very flat chest and the wig and two friends (they looked more like friends than relatives) - each one holding a hand, like two bodyguards, one for each side. Close to her was a lady with a headscarf with a gentleman (husband?) who dropped off to sleep while she read the paper (taken out of her own handbag) and generally looked very unconcerned. I wondered about the headscarf - more people seemed to look at her, than the bald lady in the row behind who was sat next to two men who came in together. One of them was in full army fatigues and his friend was casually dressed in shorts and a t-shirt - they just didn't seem to go together at all , but they went in to the clinic together (and came out smiling). There was a family- mum, daughter, husband, child (mum and daughter looked so alike) - they also went in - en masse, and also came out smiling. That wasn't true for everyone - as I said, it was both wonderful (for those who came out smiling) and awful (for those who didn't) - so many people, so many emotions...


When people started to talk, it wasn't about the emotions though, it wasn't about their lumps and bumps or their fear, or that very British subject of the weather, no, it was about the waiting times...! Now, I know this is the NHS and so this shouldn't have been an unexpected subject, but I guess I have never been in any hospital where there seemed to be so much discussion around the room. I was with someone who had a 2pm appointment and we were sat next to a lady whose appointment was 1.35 and as the waiting room was heaving and we were all packed in like sardines, somehow the subject seemed to spread outwards in a kind of ripple. I think it was the 1.35 lady who started it all, because she had been there for a while (she was early for her appointment) and at around 2.10 she pointed out the consultant and his minions who were just crossing the waiting room having apparently just arrived (or just come from lunch). I just couldn't believe that they (there were about 4 doctors/consultants and various nurses) would ever manage to get through all the ladies (and gents) who were waiting, there were just so many patients. Its the incredible thing about the NHS targets from both a patient and doctor perspective - I mean OK they started late, but maybe they finished morning clinic late - which would have been inevitable if they had a similar number of people to see. The thing is, that targets say you have to be seen within 2 weeks if you have a lump, but the clinic is only held one day a week and there are only a finite number of doctors to go round - just how is the system supposed to cope? The way it copes we discovered, as the conversation ripple spread outwards, is that they make lots of appointments all for the same time - there were three "1.35's" that were in our immediate vicinity and four "2pms". Now if there were 4 doctors then that might have been OK, but that was just the people sitting close to us, so I'm guessing that there were more than that number of patients for each slot. I am also guessing that the 8 (yes eight!) receptionists behind the main desk were in charge of meeting the NHS targets (or at least their managers are) and they can fit all these patients in by just magically booking more and more appointments all for the same time. It all makes you wonder though - if they had fewer managers and receptionists, maybe they could afford a couple of extra doctors and the waiting room wouldn't be so crowded. But then hey, if it wasn't, then we wouldn't have started by talking about waiting times and somehow ended up talking about baby sleep patterns and politics. At the moment politics has been a hot topic in the UK so that wasn't too surprising but I can't say I really expected baby behaviour - even when we are talking emotion…after all, no one threw a tantrum because they had to wait!