drip, drip, drip

I was stood on the back doorstep and noticed a drip that caiught the sun as it formed and fell, "good chance to try my pressie out" I thought.

Here's the results for your delectation and delight :-

Easter Sunday Snow

Well I woke up this morning to scenes of snow, it was a bit of a surprise as we rarely get even semi decent snow here, Leeds seems to be exempt. (click each pic for a bigger version)





Not to be deterred however we still had an Easter egg hunt, first one I've done in snow!







If you're wondering why my DS has his arms like that, he seems to have decided coats should be worn Clint Eastwood poncho style.

Medical Abbreviations

This is quite an old story that popped up on the BBC website while I was browsing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/7171453.stm

All about how medical abbreviations are not "standardised" and can cause confusion.

Now some doctors can try to ignore this, but I worked for a company once who where responsible for transferring doctors notes from which ever doctors computer systems they had into a central database, not being a doctor I ignored most of the abbreviations but sometimes I spotted stuff that was so bizarre I had to comment.

There was one case where the doctor used abbreviations that included / and \ and then select characters to encode details of a patients condition that meant fuck all to even his fellow doctors at the same practise. Because this guy assumed he'd live forever and no other doc would need his notes he justified it simply by saying "I know what it means"

My son was overdosed on antibiotics when he was a baby for similar reasons and I'm sure other people may well have experienced the same sort of thing. (he was supposedly unaffected by it, but now he has dyspraxia)

Why do doctors do this? sometimes I know they abbreviated as they had old crappy computer systems that only allowed a certain amount of characters, sometimes it was laziness, and these days I do suspect they don't have the time as some arsehole beancounter is watching and costing their every working minute.

I just hope me and mine never suffer because some doctor thinks his or her clever abbreviation is "so obvious" and another doc makes a serious, possibly fatal decision based on a wrong interpretation of those "quick ntotes"

Counting on Swaledale

Or rather counting in the Swaledale dialect. as used by Jake Thackray in his song Molly Metcalf

yan tan tether mether pip
azer sezer akker conter dick
yanadick tanadick tetheradick metheradick bumfit
yanabum tanabum tetherabum metherabum jiggit

Different dales had different variations, shows just how little people used to travel if even counting could be so different from dale to dale.

I love it, but I keep forgetting more than the first five, it only went up to 20 then they would transfer a pebble from one pocket to another and start again. I don't know what they did once they'd got up to 20 20's.

Plane being blown about in hamburg

Now this was ALL over then news, but I know a few people haven't seen this rather scary footage

watch closley at 43 seconds (ish) where the left wingtip hits the runway, just before the pilot hits the throttles and pulls away.

scary stuff



if the embedded vid doesn't work click here

Apparently he took 15 minutes to circle round and try again, I reckon he was having a swift whiskey for courage.

Stae of healthcare for the dying

I HAVE to rant

As some of you know my dads friend/partner was diagnosed with cancer on the brain in early January, the 4th to be precise

She was given 6 weeks to live if not treated

She was taken into Shefield Hospital for treatment, but they stopped it after two weeks and said she should be sent home to live out her last days in her own home. This was 5 weeks ago.

Two weeks later the hospital they wanted to transfer her to, which had been saying they had no beds, changed their minds and said they wouldn't take her as she could walk!!!! The Doctors in Sheffield hit the roof.

She was moved somewhere else and social services arsed about and finally arranged a meeting last week.

Now they have an assement meeting in 10 days time to decide if they can move her home and look after her.

She'll probably be dead by then, dying in some crappy hospital bed, maybe even dying alone.

The system doesn't work, the whole fucking system, no one cares and she suffers because of it.

Not a happy bunny, not happy at all

My dads here in tears and I can do FUCK all to help.

Where's the care? tied up in stupid red tape and profit lead healthcare, not a damn about the patients as decisions are made by measly beancounting accountants not the doctors and nurses who have done their utmost to make her time comfortable.

It was that BITCH Thatcher that introduced the idea of the NHS having to be profitable, bollocks, you can't make health care profit lead.

And this current Government has done jot all to change it, bloody Blair, more conservative than the tories

Well fucked off

Thanks for listening, and if ANYONE reads this who works for Barnsley Social Services, please contact me immediately.