It’s a pain when your name’s Polish . . .

A FEW weeks ago, I heard someone on the radio asking whether people in the NHS should show more compassion.

I don’t know, but I could have done with a little more help 12 months ago.

At the start of 2008 I found myself unable to sleep one night. Try as I might the pain in my chest would not go away.

What should I do? I live on my own and there was no one to ask. I rang my sister, a nurse, but she didn’t bother answering. I tried the internet, and that told me I was having a heart attack. Surely not?

Eventually, I rang NHS Direct who asked me a few questions, decided that it was quite possible I was having a heart attack, and sent an ambulance for me.

Minutes later, I was being whisked away under a blue light and wearing an oxygen mask.

Unfortunately, the fact that my surname is Pavasovic seemed to give the hospital staff the impression that I was an asylum-seeker or refugee.

I was constantly being asked questions by people who carefully enunciated their words to make them more understandable. I quickly began to understand how Spanish waiters must feel.

“Where . . . are . . . you . . . from? Are . . . you . . . Polish? Are . . . you . . . a . . . plumber?” I was getting fed up very quickly.

“No luv,” I replied in my best northern tones. “I were born in Hyde. Av you got a tater pie I could eat?”

And then there were the others who took it for granted that I lived with my mother. I’ve no idea why and anyway, she dropped off her perch in 1997.

As I’m sure you’ve already worked out, I didn’t have a heart attack. It turned out to be a chest infection and, at 4am, I was given a box of pills and told I could go home.

“But I’m wearing pyjamas and slippers. How do I get home at 4am?” I asked only to be met with a shrug of the shoulders. I tried to respond with a please-help-me look, which drew the retort: “If you go into reception there’s a phone you can use to call a taxi.”

So there I stood, in the middle of A&E, wearing pyjamas, ringing a taxi. Thank goodness I had had the presence of mind to put on some underpants.

I arrived home at about 4.30am and then spent two hours picking sticky things off my chest which had been used to attach me to some sort of machine. And believe me, that hurts.

And what did I do then? I went to work.