My mum has a friend who she moans about constantly. From calling her several times a day to tell her what the cats had for dinner, to asking her what she should do about XYZ. Friend lives on her own since her “partner” of 35 years died. The partner was actually a gay man who she shared the house with after her husband died (or should I say killed himself). What I’m trying to get across is she is definitely your stereotypical mad cat lady.
I’m forever having to put up with mum moaning and telling me the stories of friends abuse of the NHS. Now, I know for fact that there are no underlying health issues– just sheer boredom and entitledness. There is not a single week that goes by without friend going to the doctors for something. We’ve had suspected skin cancer which turned out to be a blackhead. Infected finger which was a skin tag next to her nail. I often say to mum “why don’t you say something to her?” and I get “well I do, I say “friend” why are you going to the doctors you don’t need to”. But she never says anything to follow it up.
So I’m sitting with mum and friend comes around and regails me with her latest story. I already knew about it because my mum had moaned to me about it. Sunday she called an ambulance because she had cut her leg. There was no arterial involvement just a cut. Even if it warranted A&E (a walk in center would have done) it sure as hell didn’t warrant an ambulance. Friend however hammed it up on the phone, got one, then complained at A&E she couldn’t wait to be seen as she needed to get home to look after the cats. She now wants to complain that even after explaining this pressing need, they still took over 5 hours to deal with her. Apparently some bloods were taken and she was told her doctor might want to put her on antibiotics.
So the reason for the visit was for her to complain she couldn’t get a doctors appointment. Apparently she was feeling ever so dreadful this morning and thought it might be sepsis so after she went out looking for her cat (!!!!!!) she phoned the doctors but couldn’t get through. When she finally got through she was told she couldn’t have an appointment but could phone up tomorrow for the blood results and they would take it from there.
My mum did say at this point “why do you need to go an see them”.
Her answer was that she wanted to go and see them so they could examine her and see how really ill she was she was convinced they weren’t answering the phone to her because they knew it was her phoning. Mum tried reassuring her it wasn’t because it was her.
At that point I admit, my patience ran thin…….I said words to the effect of “Friend, even if they were screening your calls, maybe you should take it as a bloody hint. If you had sepsis you wouldn’t be able to go looking for the cat and anyway you didn’t need an ambulance in the first place. In my world you would have been billed for wasting NHS time. If it wasn’t for people like you, maybe people could see a doctor when they are you know, sick, rather than bored with too much time on their hands”.
Friend didn’t like it and stormed off. I then got it in the neck for the next hour about how I shouldn’t have said anything. Problem is, if no one says anything, friend keeps on thinking its ok to do it.
Mum is not speaking to me now unless I apologise to friend. I'm refusing to.