About Bloody Time

We break from our regular scheduled nutritional information (which will be a bit late) to bring you this breaking news.

A letter arrived today. It read:

Dear [Experimental Chimp],

OUTPATIENT APPOINTMENT AT [A LONDON HOSPITAL]

I am pleased to be able to offer you an appointment to see a member of the neurological team led by [impressive sounding doctor] in [outpatient department details].

Date: Thursday 28th August 2008

…

If you haven’t been following this blog for the last year, you won’t have all the details. Back in May of last year, I saw a sleep specialist locally through the NHS. We tried some behavioural stuff that made no difference to my sleep patterns at all and proved impossible to follow. She wouldn’t prescribe anything, so after a couple of months we decided she couldn’t help me and she referred me to a sleep clinic in London. I’m not in London. Despite being a Southern boy, I’m living oop North.

It took the best part of three months for her letter to go to my GP, for my GP to ask the local primary care trust (PCT) if they’d fund this juant down to the big smoke, for the PCT to write to my GP saying that yes they would, but only for the initial consultation and they’d reserve judgement on any treatment, thank you very much. That was in late October last year.

In the months that followed, the sleep clinic in London has remained silent over whether I’m on a waiting list, and indeed, over whether they would acknowledge my referral. My GP claims that he’s chased them up multiple times. So by the time I get to the appointment it’ll have been just over a year since my sleep specialist told me she was going to refer me to this thing. And about 10 months since the local primary care trust agreed they’d fund it. Not, then, the speediest of referrals.

But here it is. Finally. I’m going to London to see a sleep specialist. Which kind of means I have to plan how the hell I’m going to get there. I’m kind of excited.