Background information as to why I am running this campaign.

Now, through the fog of medication, I will try to explain why I am doing what I am doing. 

I have in front of me the UKIP 'Policy' on the NHS. 

It sounds OK:

UKIP pledges an additional £3 billion more for the NHS every year; an affordable sum paid for ultimately by the savings we will make from leaving the European Union, but in the shorter term from other savings we will identify within our manifesto. We will insist this money goes into frontline resources, yes that’s real doctors, nurses and care, not middle management or expensive spin doctors.

Isn't that wonderful - an additional £3 Billion a year!  It is a drop in the ocean if only we could unlock that £56 Billion set aside for the lawyers and their clients to sue the NHS over incidents such as I encountered. 

If the NHS was a money making organisation, you could argue that when they provide poor service they shoud rightfully loose some of those profits making restitution to those they have delivered poor service to. But they are not a money making enterprise.

Some people will come back at me and say "poor service, is that how you describe taking the wrong leg off? I still have the bad leg with gangrene and now they have taken my good leg off I will spend the rest of my life in a wheelchair."

My answer to that is to give you my untold sympathy - but you know you could have decided to climb Everest, been caught in a terrible blizzard, and ended up losing both legs from frostbite - and there would have been no one to sue.  You would still have spent the rest of your life in a wheelchair - and the NHS would have helped you every step of the way and provided everything that could possibly make your life more comfortable - that is what they do.  For everyone. 

Somehow the compensation culture of 'it's someones fault, therefore they should pay' has enveloped the NHS and no one appears to have noticed. 

You can't sue the police because they failed to catch the man who stole your car - why should the NHS be any different? 

I was born in the same month and the same year that the NHS was established. I have watched it over the years turn from a service that we were all intensely proud of - turn into political football, and some sort of 'no limit' gambling outfit- 'I waited seven hours in A&E, it meant my (fill in your own blank) got ten times worse -well they can damn well compensate me for that, where that number they had on the telly, no fee-no win "Lawyers-R-Us" '. 

Lawyers-R-Us don't get free advertising - those ads have to be paid for. The offices they operate from have to be paid for. The secretaries and telephones have to be paid for. Guess what? When you sue the NHS - it is the money that is put into the NHS that pays for them. The money that should be paying a staff nurse's wages - or for a new drug.

One case that was brought to my attention yesterday showed that a lawyer received £83,000 for his services on behalf of a patient - suing the NHS for 'poor service' that was valued at £1,000.

The situation has now become so ridiculous that here are the accounts for the NHS litigation fund for the year. You can read it for yourself.

In just one year they have had to set aside an additional £27,831m to satisfy the demands of people who expected to receive financial compensation for whatever mistake was made.

Yet none of that money can ever 'undo' the mistake that has been made.

The more you sue the NHS - the less money there is to provide a servce that is not under such great pressure that it makes mistakes.

This isn't about car parking charges, or fiddling an extra £3 Billion from here or there - is is about accepting that sometimes things go wrong.

Sometimes they go wrong because someone was incompetent, inefficient, 'in' a lot of things, and they need to be fired, never allowed to practise again, systems need to change.

Sending the patient a cheque does not achieve any of that.

Sometimes things go wrong and it is nobody's fault. They don't get a cheque from the NHS Litigation fund.

But in both cases the NHS provides every treatment, every piece of equipment, everything they could need to make their life better.

I am well aware that I am not writing with my usual flair - and that there may be many spelling and typing mistakes - but I am writing through a fog of medication and dodging nurses as I do.

Right now, I am going to get my hair cut - in bed - which should be fun. I can't avoid the moon shaped face I have acquired through the steroids, and this bloody tumour wrapping itself round my neck, and making me look like an elephant with a triangular head! But I don't have to offset it with overgrown hair. I literally don't recognise myself when I look in the mirror- so I stopped looking in the mirror!

Then I shall get back to work again.

If you want to know how I was when I could write, you could always go to http://annaraccoon.co.uk/ and have a dig around there. Some of the pieces on there I was actually quite proud of. It really hurts my pride that I can't do that anymore. But there you go - what can you do when your boots let in?

Cheers everyone.