Holby Shitty – Part 1

Word to the wise: whilst Dettol Mould & Mildew Remover may be spectacularly effective at cleaning both mould and mildew, it’s not so great when it lands in your eye.

This is how I ended up at north Middlesex Accident and Emergency on a Sunday afternoon.

I’ll spare you the gory details of how it happened, and my subsequent reaction, but I will tell you that my housemate said I yelled so loudly, that he thought I was having a baby.

Here’s a little secret. I don’t ever watch television with the exception of Casualty. I’ve even been known to avoid going out on a Saturday night to get that bad boy up on BBC iPlayer with a dirty Dominos pizza and a glass of wine. There’s something perversely pleasant about it.

And yes, I am single, before you ask.

Anyway, I rush to the hospital reception with my eye burning like a mother, waiting for my Holby-esque experience to begin.

Instead of the charismatic desk clerk, I was met with a perspex window and a frumpy old lady.

‘Been here before?’ she asked.

‘No,’ I replied.

‘No?’

‘No’

‘So you haven’t been here before?’

‘No, I haven’t been here before.’

After we had ascertained I had indeed, never been there before, I filled in a form and waited. And waited. And waited.

My surroundings were pretty bleak. Around thirty people in varying states of illness, and the walls, in a very beige state of distress.

After seeing a triage nurse, and showing him the offending chemical, he tapped away at his screen and the words: ‘if product gets into eye, treat as an opthalmic emergency,’ flashed up. Oh God, oh God, oh God I’m going to be blind.

They whisked me through to the nerve centre of A&E. Here’s where I would meet Charlie Fairhead, or my devilishly filthy doctor or hopefully my kinky surgeon who enjoys a bit of how’s-yer-father between brain ops. I met the matron who can only be described as that broom-wielding woman from Tom and Jerry. Shit. My nightmare had only just begun…

Read the second installment of Helen’s two-part blog: Holby Shitty – Part 2

Image by acne courtesy of Flickr