On Friday this week I had an appointment at the Royal Free Hospital, in Hampstead, to have my annual Lung Function Tests.
As my appointment was at 10.15 am, and I needed to be ready to be picked up by the hospital transport 2 hours before hand, my carer came nice and early to get me up, showered and dressed. After taking my pills and having breakfast I was ready to go by 8.00 am.
Sadly the transport didn't turn up until 9.00 am. There is no explanation why I need to be ready 2 hours before my appointment time, and then the transport can turn up so late, its just something that I have to accept. However as I know that the journey will take between 1.5 and 2 hours I already know that I'll be late.
Then the fun started.
The vehicle that they had sent was a small van, just big enough to accommodate my wheelchair. The problem with these is that being tall, my head is on the ceiling, which means every bump in the road means I bang my head.
The driver then wasn't going to strap my wheelchair down. If you have ever watched films of the NASA "vomit comet" flights, where they take trainee astronauts up in a plane and dive steeply to simulate a zero gravity environment, you will have an idea of how a wheelchair moves around in a vehicle, unless it is tied down. As the vehicle corners the chair just slides, until it hits sometime solid to stop its progress. You have no control over your movement or how you are going to stop.
Having convinced him that I needed to be strapped down, and ensuring that he had done so properly, I then had to tell him to put a seat belt on me.
All this had taken about 15 minutes before we got going.
The driver, who I had never seen before, then proceeded to drive whilst trying to set his sat-nav.
I could see the sat-nav and watch the planned journey, but I could also see that this showed the current speed restriction on the road we were travelling on, and the actual speed we were travelling at. Almost consistently we were travelling at between 10 to 15 mph above the speed limit - even in areas with speed cameras.
Even with the driver's speeding, it was clear we were going to be late, so I rang the department and told them that I would be at least 30 minutes late for my appointment.
When we were half way down Brixton Hill, a bus pulled out in front of us, causing the driver to have to slow down rather quickly. Buses do this all the time. Its just a fact of driving in a major city, that there are going to be buses and that they will pull out into traffic. In fairness, in London, they are very big and red, you can't really miss them, and should therefore be able to anticipate that this might happen.
However for the next mile or so, the driver of my transport, followed the bus making hand gestures out of the window, directed at the bus driver. I'm sure that the bus driver wouldn't have even noticed but certainly wouldn't have cared.
Then as we got further into London, the driver stopped across a pedestrian crossing. I'm pretty sure that he could have avoided doing it, but he sat there sniggering at the pedestrians as the had to cross the road and walk round his vehicle.
A bit further on we came to a give-way, and instead of stopping, he just pulled straight out in front of a van. It was only because of the driving skill of white van man - and its not often you can say that - that there wasn't an accident.
Then as we were getting near the hospital, a lady had just started crossing the road, on a zebra crossing. She hadn't just put one foot on the crossing but had both feet firmly on the crossing and was walking confidently across. The driver, didn't even attempt to stop or slow down, but just went straight over the crossing. If the lady had been just slightly further over, she would have been cleaned out.
I was relieved to finally arrive at the hospital - not just alive - but only 30 minutes late.
The driver then had 3 - yes that is three - attempts to park his vehicle close enough to the pavement for the ramp to reach on to the kerb.
I made my way to the Lung Function Department and after checking in, was seen almost straight away.
The tests sound fairly straight forward. You have to breath into a machine and inhale and exhale as instructed, to test various parts of your breathing and lung function. Some breath's are long inhalations and long exhalations, whilst others involve quick, rapid breath's. There are others which require combinations of quick and long inhalations and exhalations. Each test is usually repeated a number of times to ensure that they get the best result.
I find these test to be quite tiring and often feel very worn out after having had them.
The whole process took about an hour, and the results will be passed to my consultant, and hopefully be ready when I go again on Wednesday.
I then make my way to the transport department to wait for a driver to take me home. Quite quickly a driver comes to get me, and I'm relieved that it is someone I know, and not the driver from this morning.
We have a very uneventful journey home and I am back indoors shortly after 2.00 pm. After a cup of tea and a sandwich, I get into my armchair for a sleep and a rest.
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