Time to stop papering over ‘craics’ and tackle corrosive alcohol abuse

MY HEART went out to Terry Prone when I read her column yesterday. And even more to the man in her life. Mind you, I always envy Terry’s ability to make me smile about something that I’m certain was a scary experience.

At the best of times, even when you know there’s nothing too seriously wrong, it’s a frightening business waiting in accident and emergency. You get to watch a lot of people doing their jobs well, but overwhelmed by circumstance and pressure. And you watch while all the time worrying that they’ll never get to you.

It can, and usually does nowadays, take hours to get to the source of the medical problem that brought you to the Emergency Department in the first place. And then it can take hours more for treatment to begin, and for the little bit of human dignity that you carried into the hospital to be restored to you in a proper hospital bed.