In September (2018) I had an angiogram to see if my mega maxi 24 mm aneurysm had shrivelled up and disappeared.
It had.
But, what was interesting was the date I had the angiogram.
Now for those of you who are not in Australia I need to explain a bit about our federal govt.
Like countries such as the US we have two major parties. When we have a federal election. one or the other gets elected. The head of the winning party becomes prime minister. The prime minister is like the US president but with two important differences:
- He doesn’t have as much power as the US president (thank goodnes!!!)
- He is elected by his party, not the voters.
Number 2 has led to an interesting phenomenon is the last decade. While Party A or Party B has been in power, members of said ruling party have become p*ssed off with their selected leader and have deposed him or her.
This practice has become so prolific in recent years that everyone jokes:
“Who is this week’s prime minister?”
So, it just happened that on that day in September, there had been yet another leadership spill and no one currnetly knew who was our prime minister.
Naturally I was grinning my head off when I told the nurse who was monitoring my mental status after the angiogram and I replied:
"Hah! I don’t know who the prime minister is and you still have to give me a pass!!
Later that night I recounted this to my son’s mother in law, who is a retired nurse. She shot back with message she had just received from one of her medical friends.
It was message from the main neurological group of practitioners which stated that due to the continuing confustion over who was the prime minister that in future this question would be removed from the list of questions asked of neuro surgery patients!