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Mr Babak Arvin 2018-11-29 Person 5 5 0

A long haul but worth it. Last January I got an Xray because I could no longer turn my 71-year-old neck far enough to the left to drive safely - I was whisked into Basildon hospital and paraded in front of students daily for a week. Then sent home in a surgical collar. I had been shown a tablet, on which was a bit of backbone with a crack down its back, by a student instructor and told in A&E it was old damage. Basildon did not really know what to do with me, so in the meantime I spent 10 days on a building site dismantling a double concrete garage, waiting for another MRI scan. At Brentwood clinic, I was greeted by Mr Arvind with "what is that you are wearing around your neck?" and promptly sent to Queens to get a "Miami J" fitted. We agreed that normally a pensioner would be screwed into position with metal rods but my building site neck was glowing with blood supply and if I spent the summer clamped together in the collar the neck might reassemble itself. [Only after this stage did I have a discharge interview at Orsett clinic conducted by a young junior "John", who had the time to display my MRI on a 3X life size screen and I looked like a dinosaur. "What is this over here?" "That is your C2 peg that you have snapped off" [The target of a hangman]. So I had at some time been very lucky or unlucky depending on how you look at it. The glorious summer of 2018 was spent clamped in the MJ collar (growing a beard, hiding a shrinking neck) eventually being allowed out to regain my use of a re-aligned spine. There seemed to be some sort of delay at Queens in the Radiology dept. but now I have been passed as fit [enough to reassemble the garage?] ;-) Had I been in the USA with insurance I bet I would have been clamped together by now, unable to be active again. Well done. [Could anything have been done better - medically no - administratively Basildon needs to fit collars correctly and explain to patients what is going on. The students need to engage - we are not plastination exhibits. As a pensioner, it is better all round if we travel off-peak on a bus pass and ideally get an Xray in the morning and a surgeon's appointment that afternoon. By the way, Brentwood Community Hospital has some free patient parking. [Remember folks Doctors studied at university and learned Latin mumbo jumbo, while surgeons were busy learning manual skills from a barber. It is inverted snobbery, that is why they are now called Mister]