enough that my wife's diabetic consultant, who is brilliant, overrules our hospital and insists that his patients be allowed to keep their own insulin pens. If we had a different postcode, she'd have a different diabetic consultant, and she'd just have to run that gauntlet. I've seen this idiocy in action first-hand, though we were lucky enough that it led to my wife's blood sugar merely being screwed up to the extent that she had to miss her surgery slot, which in turn led to extreme pain -- the worst she says she's ever experienced -- as the painful drugs which were supposed to kick in while she was under anaesthetic instead took effect while she was awake. But at least she didn't end up in a diabetic coma. I've also seen a midwife utterly screw up my wife's insulin dose, but because, as I explained, we keep an eye on what's going on rather than blindly trusting the staff, we were able to point out the error and have it fixed. If we'd trusted the staff to do everything right, I'd be a childless widower. I'm perfectly happy to concede that doctors are human and some mistakes are inevitable and normal and forgivable. But the above couple of examples hardly scratch the surface of our experiences. We kept forgiving the odd mistake, and it just became clearer and clearer that they weren't one-offs; fuck-ups are standard practice. As for the charge of arrogance, have we been caught in pissing