St.Georges Hospital

Because I am now of a certain age, one gets offered the chance of a bowel cancer screening appointment and today was my day. I believe this a reasonably new service offered and I know that further screening is offered again at 60. But this was no ‘poo on a stick’.  At home I had to self administer an enema before my appointment at the hospital where a camera will look for any abnormalities and remove any polyps for testing.

I was incredibly worried about the enema side of things more than anything (as this was a screening and not because I was ill or had a problem) and let’s say I probably achieved about 80% of what I should have because I ballsed it up slightly. But they were very reassuring, through my embarrassment, and I was given a clean bill of health and there were no polyps to remove.

I am incredibly grateful to the NHS for offering this service to us despite the unpleasantness of the procedure (and wondered if an oral option could be given to ‘clear’ your system out?). The procedure was fairly quick and I was back home by mid morning. Feeling rather guilty that maybe I should have gone back to work. However, it soon became apparent that I needed to be near a toilet for the next few hours.

B, one of my pt teachers I work with, offered to come over to see me and arrived in the afternoon with Mabel, her 10 month old golden lab. Well, Ruby was in her element at having a play date and they were charging around the house and playing lovely. After a cuppa we ventured out for a dog walk,  in ‘my’ grounds (I didn’t want to go to far), in the atrocious weather ~ weather warning for rain. Once back in doors they had another play before B headed off home. It ended up taking her 2 hours as the A3 was flooded.

(These statues are as you go into the hospital ~ maybe from the original site of the hospital in London, I don’t know).