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4 April 2012

Posted by DMC on 5 April 2012 in Diary |

I’m sorry to say I had another painful night. Fortunately I had a telephone consultation booked for today. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the so-called consultation turned out to be a nurse ringing to find out how I was. I just can’t get it out of my mind that there must be something more sinister going on. I was given to understand that the consultation was to be with Mr Abrahams, the Dr who carried out the nerve block on my shoulder. The letter that came to me concerning this appointment said that the ‘consultation’ will replace your face-to-face outpatients clinic appointment’.

When it came to it. I was telephone by a nurse who merely wanted to know how the nerve block had gone. It was not what I would call a consultation, particularly as the nurse was unable to comment on the any of my questions. The whole consultation can be summed up with the one sentence the nerve block did not work. So it seems and I’m now going to be referred back to the Arthur Rank Hospice. . I suppose my pain comes under palliative care which is what the Hospice specialises in. However, as I have an appointment in 10 days or so with my MND . I shall try to get Dr Chris Allen more personally involved. I’m not interested in increasing the dose of painkillers so much as I am to get to the root of the problem I also had to remind the nurse who telephoned me that the life expectancy MND patients is limited and as some months have gone by since I was first referred to the Arthur Rank Hospice I’m not very encouraged or indeed impressed. Accordingly I have written to Dr Mark Abrahams, copied to Joanna Sassons – the coordinator of my MND team at Addenbrookes – as well. As to Dr Margaret Saunders herself.

Talking of not being impressed, I received an e-mail from you Dragon people (Nuance) a few days ago, saying ‘we do like to witness your problems during a co-browser session. Until now we have not been able to do so since Dragon seemed to be showing almost no problems during the sessions’. This despite a lengthy exchange of e-mails between us over the last nine months, which have included more than once, the Dragon Log and Knowledge base.. This afternoon I was trying to close a session with the usual commands and instead of doing as I asked it. it Merely typed in the command into my text. So here is an instance where perhaps the co-browse with Dragon would be able to identify the problem. So I gave them a call, as I have been instructed to do when a problem arose, so they could co-browse and see what was a problem for themselves. They took control of my desktop but were unable to see why my commands have been misunderstood, so in effect, I was back when I started nine months ago.

On the question of the telephone calls I had merely made the point that at no stage is the caller warned that they are on a premium line. They agree that the message on the telephone states that the support is free but does not mention that the call will be free. Then they referred me to their website, which says, inter alia, ‘UK calls will cost 6 p per minute from BT landlines.”. First of all, I never look at their website and I asked when they added this warning? I suspect after I complained to the trading standards office. The place where the warning should be given is on the automated message which should say ‘that this support is free but the caller is being charged at a premium rate, of 6 p a minute, for UK calls. I’m not going to banging my head against a brick wall over this matter as they clearly intent to do nothing about refunding me for the 60/70 odd telephone calls I have made over the last nine months. Also it is obvious that they do not intend to doing anything about the non-recognition or mis-recognition of commands, so I guess I will just have to live with it.

I did promise to report back to any of my readers who might be interested in the outcome of the Roho cushion saga. I said previously that I would not be able to evaluate the improvement until I sat on it for 13 hours or so.

I’m glad to say there was a discernible improvement in this cushion since Sarah, the area manager, whose supplies these cushions, made the necessary adjustment to the amount of air in it. I will report once more in a week’s time to see if the improvement continues.

The threatened strike by the oil tanker drivers over the Easter holiday been removed so the panic buying of petrol has abated . Now the baggage handlers at Stansted Airport are threatening to strike for the three days of the holiday. Whilst apologising for any inconvenience this strike will cause to the travelling public. they hypocritically have chosen the three days which will cause the maximum inconvenience to the passengers

As this entry started off with a misunderstanding about the telephone consultation with the pain Dr. I thought the following embarrassing medical situations might be appropriate. Click here to see them.

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