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John Jagger |
My eye op, and NHS vision for the US
I STARED into two intensely bright lights with my left eye.
The lights were moving and swaying slightly from side to side. It was as if someone was trying to hypnotise me with a beautifully choreographed modern dance.
I concentrated hard on the lights shining through the dressing draped over my eye, thinking that would make it easier to ignore what the surgeon was doing – and it worked.
I hardly felt a thing as he removed the lens in my left eye and replaced it with the tiniest of an implanted lens, about six millimetres in diameter.
The operation probably lasted no longer than seven or eight minutes but in that time the surgeon had carried out a procedure for the removal of a cataract which is now – thanks to the National Health Service – a routine matter for tens of thousands of patients a year.
Complications occur from time to time, no doubt, but I gather cataract ops go ahead generally without any trouble.
I was treated at the day surgery clinic at the Royal Free hospital in Hampstead on Monday, taking my place with several other men and women from middle-aged upwards.
The nurses could not have been more pleasant or more efficient, nor the doctors – the first to check what kind of lens I wanted, the second to carry out the op.
I was probably in the safest and most expert hands in Britain for the removal of my old lens – the hands of the Mr Jon Jagger who is officially the Queen’s physician, registered as the Queen’s Oculist General.
Though he is recognised as one of the most senior opthalmic consultants at the Free, he is by no means the only one with a reputation that is recognised throughout the country.
I asked for him because I knew he was on the staff of the department and judging by the demand for his services I assume many other patients want him as well.
Well, what’s good enough for the Queen, I thought, is good enough for me.
And why not?
The procedure was carried out under a local anaesthetic, a needle inserted under and above the eye – hardly felt a prick – and that’s the way I like it. I believe that if I have to go under the knife it’s better if I can see what’s happening to me.
The whole procedure, from entering the ante-room to the theatre, being given an anaesthetic and then being operated on in the adjoining theatre, couldn’t have taken more than 25 minutes.
A few minutes afterwards I went home by bus, and the next day was back at the office.
It was a tribute to that great British institution, the NHS, which is too often found fault with, sometimes, admittedly, in this newspaper, but which, nonetheless, is a service we should be proud of.
Hopelessly optimistic, radicals in the United States want to introduce a slimmed-down version of the NHS – and no wonder for there are more than 40 million in that country who have no medical insurance at all while those who pay for it rarely get the same quality service as we Britons do.
Obama would perhaps like to see a state-financed health system of some sort, but the resistance of the big drugs companies and conservative medical circles will probably prove too strong for him.
Here we can be operated on by the Queen’s physician and all under our clever insurance system. Who can beat that?
Methinks Bea doth protest too much
BEATRIX Campbell is a free-ranging feminist, and a deep thinker, with an original mind.
I have followed her career with admiration from her Marxist days on the Morning Star to campaigning feminist, film-maker, writer of several tops class studies and plays.
But I do think Campbell, who lives in Camden Town, may have protested too much in a Comment message in the Guardian this week about why she has accepted an OBE.
Her politics, she writes, are of Marxism, feminism, republicanism, gay and green, an eclectic mix that is for the good of society.
But last night (Wednesday) she confessed to me that she “agonised a bit” and thought about it for days.
She wants the government to take out the imperialist connotation in the award. It should be more along the lines of “citizen to citizen and less about the imperialist past,” she told me.
Got a point there. But I still think of many radical writers – in particular, the Caribbean poet Benjamin Zephaniah – who simply refused to accept a gong.
Opening is a piece of cake for Bennett!
LAUGHTER was ringing out as I entered the splendid new James Wigg surgery in Kentish Town last week.
I should have known of course.
The loveable Alan Bennett – playwright and superb short story writer – was the cause of it all. He stood in front of a large crowd, mainly patients, all enjoying the opening ceremony, and the funny stories only Alan Bennett could tell in his droll Yorkshire accent, and tell like an old Music Hall comedian, almost imitative of the great Stanley Holloway.
Bennett, a patient at James Wigg, was the star turn when the plans that have just borne fruit were first put on display three years ago.
Perhaps the occasion last week brought something out in him. It gave him a chance to praise the NHS of which he is a great devotee. Afterwards, he mixed with the crowd, followed by a BBC team who are making a documentary of the ceremony for a slot in December.
I tried to speak to him for a few minutes but Bennett, notoriously difficult to pin down, said: “Perhaps, we can talk later but you know I am not a good interviewee.”
Opening is a piece of cake for Bennett!
I HAVE heard a jazz band play at a funeral.
I have heard relatives sing pop songs.
But until the other week I had never heard the mourners clap. There were applause as the sombre undertakers brought in the coffin of Ken Gill, a former TUC leader, who lived in Belsize Park in the 60s.
Acting as MC to the 250 mourners squeezed into the small chapel at Golders Green crematorium, retired union chief Rodney Bickerstaffe said: “Now, as Ken Gill comes in, I want you all to clap!”
And clap everyone did! After the speeches about the much-respected trade unionist who would never accept any honours, the little jokes and family reminiscences, the one-hour service came to an
end, but not before Bickerstaffe made his last request of the mourners: “Now, as the coffin disappears I want you to clap and clap and clap,” he said.
Thunderous applause rang out as Ken Gill bowed out. |
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