The NHS saved my life – we should all be entitled to the quality of care that I received

IT’S been an eventful few weeks – Christmas, New Year, my 80th.

I shared this landmark ­birth date with Dolly Parton, which is wonderful. And John ­Bercow, which isn’t.

But the biggest event was a heart attack the week before Christmas.

It gave me a privileged insight into the National Health Service at its finest — and a glimpse of where it goes pear-shaped.

For a start, the 999 call brought an ambulance to my door almost within the recommended 30 minutes.

I’m grateful the drama didn’t come two days later — the start of their first-ever strike.

Yes, the ambulance went to the wrong address.

And yes, it had to stop at the kerbside with blue lights flashing for precious minutes while the driver Googled the world-famous cardiology hospital half a mile from my home.

Creaking at seams

Paramedics cover unfamiliar areas sometimes, but shouldn’t they have a tailored NHS satnav for every hospital on their patch?

The two-man team was superb. A swift ECG showed what happened to my ticker and I was given a souvenir copy in case it happened again.

The stretcher ride through the hospital corridors and swing doors was as exciting as an episode from Casualty.

I lost track after this but I recall soothing piped music, with Itchycoo Park by the Small Faces (“I got high, high . . .”) just as the anaesthetist murmured: “I’m giving you 5mg of morphine.”

I stopped shaking and was wheeled out with three shiny new stents channelling blood through a previously blocked artery, fondly known as The Widowmaker.

“You’ve had a not-insignificant heart attack,” intoned the surgeon.

You have to be my age to understand why this conjured images of John Major and his “flapping white coats”.

Or perhaps you have to be on morphine. And if my wife had not dialled 999?

“You would have suffered a collapse followed by cardiac arrest,” said the surgeon.

I stopped thinking about John Major.

The nursing staff were wonderful. I’m so pleased they voted at this particular hospital against joining the RCN strikes.

But, discharged 48 hours later, I became aware the hospital was not entirely strike-free. There were NO ambulances delivering emergency patients that day.

My experience of the sharp end of NHS care was brilliant.
So were the follow-up checks with my GP.

But the further you drift from this sharp end, the clearer the signs of a system creaking at the seams.

Coronaries are usually sorted on the spot — unlike the complex, extended terrors of cancer and the long waits for tests.

Even so, lost notes and misrouted texts and calls — an NHS speciality — can steer you into a world of chaos and incomprehension.

Ring your hospital and after a multiple choice quiz, a real person might pick up the phone, but say . . . nothing. Not even “hello”.

“Is that so-and-so hospital?” “Yes.” Silence.

You will be asked for an NHS or hospital number.

“There is no record of that number.” “Did you take it down correctly?” “Yeah”. “Can you read it back to me?” “I’ve deleted it.”

Ask to be put through to a well-known rehabilitation unit for an appointment and nobody has heard of it.

It’s enough to give you a heart attack. Then a breakthrough as a smart doctor answers all your questions and gives crystal- clear advice.

Is it safe to fly to Australia? Yes. It’s only a holiday, not the sort of permanent move planned by so many NHS doctors and nurses.

This Aussie brain drain sums up an NHS in crisis.

Good recovery

As we scour the world for skilled nurses and doctors, our own expensively trained angels are seeking a new life Down Under.

For all its deficiencies, and it has plenty, Australia’s health system offers a work/life balance which is impossible under our arthritic bureaucracy.

Yet for all the Left’s clamour for cash, the NHS is among the best-funded systems in Europe.

We should all be entitled to the quality of care that I received.

Labour belatedly admits the NHS is a “service, not a shrine”.

That’s a gift to the Tories, if they choose to grab it.

By the way, some of you may be pleased to know I’ve made a good recovery.

Dolly and I are now looking forward to our centuries.