Quangos Try to Kill You

Not done much posting and reading of blogs for some months. I've been off work too. It'll be 5 weeks tomorrow. Hospitalised. Why? I've got endocarditis. How did I get it? See here .

I have had a not very well functioning heart valve for years. Diagnosed when I was 7 and rediagnosed when I was about 30 and told to me. So, for the last 27/28 years I have worked hard on keeping my heart fit and have done so. This regime also included prophylatic antibiotics before any dental procedure.

Consequent upon the NICE guidance my dentist asked me to check with my GP as to whether the prophylatic antibiotics should be discontinued. I asked him and he said that he had taken advice from a cardiologist and the answer was that they were 'required to take account of NICE guidance'.

I then proceeded normally, but without any prohylaxis,and had two or three minor dental treatments - check ups and cleans - and by Christmas 2008 my wife had noticed that I was not my usual self. I first noticed symptoms over the weekend of 30 / 31 May 2009. Endocarditis is very difficult to diagnose and it took until late September, by when I had become very ill, that Endocarditis was diagnosed in a consultation with a specialist that I had to pay for as the NHS could not provide an appointment until weeks later. I was immediately committed to hospital and put on a 6 week course of antibiotics.

I am incensed that some bloody bureaucrat should interfere in the professional relationship I have with my doctors and end up with exactly the wrong advice which has gone a long way to ruin all the keep fit work I have done for nigh on 30 years.

The moral of this story is that Quangos kill you. Always do exactly the opposite of what they tell you. My financial services business operates on exactly that principle and we've been proved right and the FSA wrong.

I am now going to read the NICE guidance thoroughly and send them a very straightforward letter basically telling them that they are a bunch of wankers and what are they going to do about an apology and compensation. Fat chance. Oh, and all the clinicians I have spoken to have remarked that there has been a spike in endocarditis cases since the NICE guidance.

Bastards.