h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Just got back from my first appointment at the pain clinic. Got a collapsed disc in my lower back and some gunge from inside the disc is pressing on nerves. It stated 3 years and 3 months ago and it's taken all this time to get an appointment to do something about it. They've lent me a TENS (Transcutaneous Electrical Nerve Stimulator) machine. It's a little black box with a battery in it connected to a couple of pads stuck an inch apart near the site of the burst disc. It has 4 little buttons on it; on/off, increase tingle, decrease tingle, change tingle. Hope it improves things.

The waiting room of the pain clinic (in Northampton General Hospital) is full of things for sale like second hand books and tea cosies. There are competitions to name the teddy bear and all sorts of other things to pay for the clinic. So this is what the National Health Service has come to.

The pain has been really intense and it amazed me that I could go from working between 40 and 60 hours a week to being incapable of working at all (for about 6 months) and the National Health Service made no real effort to help. This is the same NHS I and all the other tax payers imagined would help us if anything like this happened. You'd think they'd want to help to get workers back to work at the very least to pay for the flippin' service. Well, whatever my taxes go to pay for, it doesn't seem as though it's that pain clinic.