Sean Moncrieff: I’m guilty of going private

Daughter Number Two finally had the tonsils out. In the last couple of years the frequency of trips to the doctor had increased, and nearly every time they’d peer into her throat and try not to recoil. Daughter Number Two, it turned out, had grown tonsils so gargantuan that even medical professionals found them a little scary.

We did enquire if we could keep them afterwards; perhaps use them as a doorstop or some sort of garden furniture. But apparently this kind of frivolity is not allowed. Political correctness gone mad.

Not that it was all jokes and dancing on the way in. Some years back, the same daughter had another procedure during which a slightly crazed anaesthetist encouraged Daughter Number Two to relax by screaming RELAX at her and playing whale sounds. Life tip: if you want someone to relax, don’t scream RELAX at them. Curiously, it has the opposite effect.

Thus she was a bit nervous about encountering something similar. But this time the staff were stellar: a no-nonsense nurse put her at her ease. This anaesthetist had an easy charm and asked for music requests. Then he put on Ed Sheeran, but Daughter Number Two was relaxed enough to forgive this lapse.

‘I thought my dependency on alcohol made my anxiety better’

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When your marriage depends on being able to kitesurf

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How to do what you need to do, even if the idea paralyses you

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Sr Íde Ní Riain RSCJ – An Appreciation

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The procedure lasted less than half an hour and soon after she was wheeled back to her room, extolling the delights of morphine in a slightly-too-loud voice. She went onto Snapchat to announce that she'd just had an Arsedectomy and laughed until snot ran onto her chin. She opened an Amy Schumer concert video on her iPad (the Wi-Fi in the hospital was excellent) and promptly fell asleep: too late, alas, to stop the word muthafuka echoing around the hospital corridor.

Later on, they brought tea and toast (remembering to bring her preferred soya milk), along with a menu for dinner and breakfast.

Yes, guilty: we went private. While I sat in her room, I used the excellent Wi-Fi to read how The Council of Europe has called Ireland’s social services “manifestly inadequate”, including a failure to guarantee access to health services. While I sat in that room and looked out at the lovely wooded grounds, people in other hospitals were waiting for hours in A&E or lying on gurneys in corridors. Daughter Number Two would have had to wait for a year to get her tonsils out in the public system; slap bang in the middle of her Leaving Cert.

Yes, guilty. I do feel that. I shouldn’t have to justify what was the best decision for my daughter: indeed there’s a logical argument that going private means one less person clogging up the already stretched public system. Boo hoo. Poor bleeding-heart middle-class me.

In a meritocracy, people who have done well sometimes like to think that it’s entirely down to their own efforts. But that’s myth making. Yes, there’s talent and effort. But there’s also luck and circumstances and people who helped along the way. And if you end up with a nice house and few bob in the bank after all that, then fair play to you. You can, with some justification, tell yourself you deserve it.

But there are also plenty of hard-working, talented people who didn’t get the luck or the help. Do they deserve to be less well off? More to the point, do they deserve to be less healthy than other people?

My daughter didn’t have to wait a year for her procedure because of luck, the circumstances of her birth. She deserved this no more than the girl who will have to wait a year. I do feel guilty about that. So should you.