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Is it broken? The system, I mean. We all have anecdotes. Here is mine. I’m due an injection once a quarter. I won’t die without it. My bones may get weak (and I’m feeling that), I may get a bit lethargic and, if I neglect it too long, I tend to get a heavy bout of the blues. But I can survive without it. I confess I don’t take it very seriously, because it’s an annoyance. I wish I didn’t have to have it.

That’s probably why I wasn’t bothered too much when the three-month period lapsed in early December. I was busy, and forgot about it, or at least didn’t prioritise it. It’s my wife who picks up on these things, usually when my mood takes a turn for the worse. She reminded me about it in early January. That’s when I rang up the surgery to make an appointment. The earliest they could give me was a month away. First thing Monday morning at the start of half-term.

That was this morning. I set so many alarms to remind myself not to miss it. Asked my family to remind me. I can’t miss this appointment, I told them, or I’ll be waiting another month. Turns out I needn’t have worried, because I couldn’t sleep anyway. Rising early, I walked down to the health centre just after eight. No sign of a health service under strain: the place was empty when I arrived.

I sit in the waiting room for a minute before the practice nurse comes for me. It’s not my usual, but I follow on. As I motion to take a seat, she’s asking about my blood test. I’m hoping she can consult my notes to tell me exactly what tests are needed, because to be honest I can’t remember what’s required. I was discharged from endocrinology so long ago that it all seems like mere ritual. Nobody actively monitors the results to adjust my treatment accordingly; my GP will simply tell me my levels are a bit low. A statement of the bloody obvious.

What about my injection, I ask? “Oh, I’m sorry,” says the nurse, “I can’t give you that.” But I’ve waited a month for this appointment, I tell her. This was the first slot they could give me, I was told. “Only my colleague can give injections,” she says. I can tell from her face that she’s not getting on with the reception staff. They’d written down “three-month blood test” in the diary. No mention of my injection at all. But she’s not going to argue with me, because I guess this is an ongoing battle with the admin team, as they fail to accurately record what the patient says. She kindly books me in later in the week instead, wiping out her colleague’s break.

I’m not the kind of person to make a fuss. I explain that the reason I didn’t push more firmly when I rang up to book the appointment was because I knew the healthcare system is in crisis — it’s all over the news. But she said, “No, if this happens again, ask reception to send us a message and we’ll make sure we get you booked in on time.” There we are: healthcare professionals who understand the importance of treatment being delivered when it’s required. But the administrative teams? I guess it’s just a minimum-wage job.

That part of the system seems to be the most severely broken of all. The surgery has outsourced their phone system to a private company, which would be great if it worked. But nearly on a weekly basis there is a message on the website explaining that their phone system is down due to a nationwide outage. Yep, this is effecting hundreds of health centres around the country who have also bought into this managed service. In my book, that’s a clinical risk of mammoth proportions. If I was the practice manager, I would have torn up that contract the first time they breached their SLA.

But here we are: this is the standard of care now available to the common man in great Britain. In my case, it’s no big deal. I have an androgen deficiency caused by a chromosome disorder: it will only cause me harm in slow motion. But mildly worried by a strange pain, or a swelling, or weird symptoms, and who knows? Maybe your call will be triaged effectively, or maybe you’ll have the misfortune of deciding to do something about it on the day the phone system is inoperable due to a national outage and, failing to get through, will then just revert to form, telling yourself, well, it’s probably nothing to worry about.

So this is how we play it: those of us who hate causing inconvenience to others. We’re the ones who are apologetic, apologising for making the phone call, apologising for taking up the GP’s time, apologising for giving the practice nurse more work to do, apologising for not feeling very well, apologising for having health conditions which need to be treated.

But eventually we might recall that this is just not right: that we have it all wrong. That, no, actually we’ve got it all back to front. How do we address the failures in the system? Who is signing off on processes and systems which are just not fit for purpose? Someone needs to look into that.