Time to fight for your life

It comes to something when you have to stage the equivalent of a sit-in at your local hospital to avoid dying. However it would seem that might be what you have to do in future if you think your medical advisors haven’t understood how sick you are, or if you think they have failed to correctly diagnose your condition.

18-year-old Ben Brown of Whangarei might still have been alive if he had known to refuse to leave the hospital when doctors TWICE sent him home and told him he was okay. Ben died of meningococcal disease last week after doctors at Whangarei White Cross Accident & Medical Clinic and the Whangarei Hospital Emergency Department both failed to realise what was wrong with him.

Now I understand meningococcal disease is difficult to diagnose, but isn’t that all the more reason to take no risks when somebody presents with the symptoms? Surely it would be far better to hold a few people overnight to ensure they don’t have the disease than send them home where they can (a) die through lack of appropriate treatment and (b) pass it on to another?

Furthermore isn’t it worrying how careless our medical profession is becoming? I can’t help feeling it is part of the general malaise wherein people don’t give a stuff about doing their job properly and have insufficient vision to see the bigger picture.

Actually it is worse than that because the majority of us simply accept these lower standards instead of confronting the lazy and the stupid and ‘waking up their ideas’.

I have experienced two examples of incompetent medical practices since moving to Tauranga (only 4 years ago). I was once wrongly diagnosed and twice given the wrong treatment by my (now ex) doctor. And before anyone tells me diagnosis is a difficult art; I should point out that in the case of the misdiagnosis I had suggested what might be wrong and was rubbished and dismissed out of hand and given the wrong medication. Trouble was; I was spot on.

In the other case I was given the wrong treatment for several months with no improvement whatsoever until I sought alternative treatment and the matter was cleared up almost immediately.

Following these two incidents and some extremely unprofessional doctoring experienced by my wife at the same practice we changed to another. All of which reinforced to me the importance of taking responsibility and control off your own health. Changing practices was a revelation. We now attend a medical centre that has a good feel to it and where the doctors actually know who you are when you enter their surgery and (shock horror) you will find they have read your notes before seeing you!!!! Another bonus for us was that we learned that our previous practice is charging more than any other in Tauranga and more than twice what we pay now.  For those of you who live in Tauranga and are less than satisfied with your doctors, I commend this link where you can find out how much the others are charging. http://www.bopdhb.govt.nz/PDFs/GP-Fees.pdf

Elder care is another and even scarier proposition as I have also had cause to find out this year. The entire system is myopic. For the benefit of those who haven’t dealt with this yet, here are some words of warning.

If your folks are getting old and need some assistance in the home; good luck. Unless you have screeds of money to pay for it (or they do) you will get bugger all and furthermore you will be buggered about every step of the way. The problem arises if they don’t have a serious physical infirmity. If they are completely buggered then they will get help (I am told – though probably not very reliably). However if they can walk and seem to know what day it is (give or take a day or two), then the assistance available to them is negligible.

If for example one parent is a bit difficult and requires a lot of extra care you can EVENTUALLY get them into some kind of temporary care to give the other party a break. However if this has been going on for any length of time and the carer is really stressed out; then tough luck. Unless the carer has a physical infirmity it would seem the system considers removing the other party is all that is needed. A full-blown nervous breakdown and all that entails (or a heart attack or stroke) would appear to be required before that person gets any assistance at all. If you are about to enter the point where your parents need some of this sort of help, then I hope you have lots of money because if you don’t you will need lots of stamina and you will feel like you are constantly bashing your head against a brick wall.

So when the cheerleaders in their eye-catching blue and red rosettes starting flaunting themselves around trying to get your vote in a couple of months time, ask them what they are going to do about it.

We see grinning idiots up here every other week cutting ribbons to open new parts of a hospital or whatever other bright shiny distraction they have provided in the place of any proper treatment. So why not corner these turkeys and ask them why they prefer to bail out banks and insurance companies than put effort and money into health care.

Ask these dorks how they think an ambulance at the bottom of a cliff is ever going to be more economical than a well built fence at the top. We need to apply a blowtorch to these politicians’ nether regions until they find the pain too much to bear and start paying attention to their electorate.  

Keep your eyes on his hands

For someone whose name can mean to sharpen a knife, the loose cannon that is CURRENTLY the member for Te Tai Tokerau is not very sharp.

He doesn’t seem to have any sense of self-awareness or perspective. His latest hysterical outburst is to suggest we have a Maori (read Harawira) Parliament. He has some fluffy idea that all the Maori MPs should work together for the good of Maori rather than following the edicts of their respective parties. Hmm, there’s a great idea, and perhaps all the Pakeha members could also turn their backs on their parties and form a Pakeha Parliament working exclusively for the good of Pakeha?

Somehow I don’t think (S)Hone(k)y would approve of that one. I suspect that such a suggestion would be greeted by accusations of racism.

Ever wondered why people seem to think this phenomenon can only operate in one direction? The trouble is; many of us make this concept even more deeply embedded in the national psyche by talking of ‘reverse racism’ which is semantically incorrect if you think about it. To reverse racism is to be an integrationist, which is actually the complete opposite of a racist. So I plead to all my Pakeha colleagues to drop such nonsense terms in favour of the accurate one, which is racism. After all if you look up the definition of racism you will find it described as a bigoted attitude towards other races and a belief that one’s own race is superior to others. The definition as with the trait is not linked in any way to people of any particular skin colour or background.

But to return to my original point; the member (and I’ve often referred to him as an utter member – though not in exactly those words) for Te Tai Tokerau. Actually I don’t believe he is the member for TTT anymore. The stupid rules devised by pollies to look after their own sorry arses say that he is (for now), but I believe anybody elected to an electorate seat on a party ticket loses their mandate as soon as they quit their party. He says he is going to win the seat again in the ridiculous and wasteful bye-election he has insisted upon calling, but it is obvious that even he realises this is extremely unlikely. His latest behaviour following a poll conducted by Maori Television’s Native Affairs programme shows very clearly that he knows his time is up. The poll showed Labour’s candidate almost completely closing the gap on him, but HH isn’t remotely fazed. His explanation is that his supporters don’t have landlines and therefore weren’t polled. I’m not surprised he is so sure about this; most of his supporters come from his dysfunctional whanau and most of them are the sorts that would use cheap mobile phones along with a never-ending batch of nicked SIM cards.

But I saw signs of something much more worrying in HH’s responses to that poll which makes me more than usually concerned about the upcoming bye-election. I do hope the electoral commission people keep a very close eye on how that event unfolds because the way Harawira is talking I can see a very real possibility that dodgy electoral practices are inevitable. He is already tossing about veiled threats towards those in his former party, which, though vague in nature, quite possibly carry with them the promise of something more. He has also spoken quite strongly about “the need to ensure his supporters cast their votes”. Not an offensive turn of phrase on its own, and a wise political sentiment.... were it delivered by somebody else that doesn’t have a history of violence and intimidation, both personally and among his aforementioned dysfunctional whanau. However when such a statement is made by a Harawira, the electoral commission would do well to scrutinise every single aspect of this bye-election to ensure that people are not ‘transported’ to the polls and coerced into voting for the incumbent member. They would do well to check the rolls very closely to weed out any duplicate voting or any other sort of ruse that might push his numbers up.

You can’t trust pollies at the best of time; they often lie to protect their interests and frequently stoop to dirty tricks to get their own way. In a funny sort of way HH is actually less of a problem than some of the others because he is such a loud-mouthed buffoon, that he gives fair warning of what he is. Some of the quieter ones are probably even more of a danger - although somehow I can’t see someone like Phil Goff (and he’s off) having the balls to pull some of the stunts this guy does.

I’ve left the best bit until last. Shonky Hone(k)y delivered his stunning vision to a rapt audience of his supporters in.... wait for it.... (New York? Auckland? Or even Whangarei?) ....all wrong. He delivered it in the gigantic political centre and metropolis of Panguru! For those who haven’t been there, Panguru (pop 300) is a delightful place, just a five minute ferry ride across the Hokianga Harbour from Rawene. Good to see Hone really knows how to pull a crowd!