Hey, that's my excuse!

So we moved house recently. Top notch, no more toe-to-toe finger-pointing arguments with psychotic neighbours over the noise my children make while playing football in the garden; no more constant noise from the flats they are building only 5 metres away from my front window. Joy! Somewhat distilled however by spraining my wrist just before moving. Oops.

On the day I sprained my wrist, I decided to go to casualty (that's ER to all my US-based readers - oh, hold on, I don't have readers of any kind except for myself). I went to Hôpital Edouard Herriot; apparently it's a gem of 1930's architecture. Maybe it was a gem in the 1930s, but it's in need of some polishing 70 years later. However, the excitement amongst the staff was palpable (not the people who had arrived with serious head trauma) - they had just installed their brand-new patient management system. I was one of the first through the system. It was so efficient they were able to send me immediately to radiology for an x-ray of my potentially fractured wrist. A 5 minute wait, I'm in-out, but unable to shake it all about 'cos my wrist hurts like hell.
"Down to the waiting room and a doctor will be with you in 5 minutes for the diagnosis".
There were some people there in seriously bad shape. I thought it entirely acceptable that they should pass in front of a big-jessie like me. However, the French being the French, those with injuries who I judged to be no worse than mine started complaining after waiting less than an hour - like the good, repressed, don't-like-to-make-a-fuss, have-a-nice-cup-of-tea, type of Englishman that I am, I waited 3.5 hours before suggesting gently that I may have been forgotten.

My analysis was correct. The explanation was predictable: "new software system, glitches, you know what it's like with that sort of thing". Oh yes, I surely do, I've worked on enough software projects in the past to know exactly what it's like. Doesn't help when you've been sat in a waiting room staring at a wall for 4 hours though. Apparently, I was so fast through to radiology that the system didn't have time to enter me into the doctor's rota or god-knows-what. [Programmer's amongst you: maybe some kind of FIFO queue was needed - discuss].

To keep me interested (in a make-him-think-we're-doing-something kind of way), they put me in a cubicle with a first year medical student. She reassured me by saying that she'd been asked to look at some x-rays that morning and had diagnosed a sprained wrist, missing the fact that there was a double fracture..."yours seems OK though, but hold on, what's this.....oh no, nothing, I guess I'm just a bit paranoid after this morning, better to be safe than sorry, etc. etc.".

So half an hour later, a real doctor arrives, spends 30 seconds looking at the x-ray, diagnoses a sprained wrist, gives me a nice splint and a letter that allows me, if I want, to have 2 weeks off work. I guess you know me by now (2 weeks off work! A nice cup of tea is all that is needed here").

Moral of this tale: don't keep dissing the NHS and thinking that the French health service is so great. And don't trust software engineers.