In short, I’ve caught this cold. I had a family member having a bit of a temp last weekend, and on Tuesday at work I was shivering with cold inside. On Tuesday night I had high temperature myself, which I seem to have managed to stop. But my throat is so sore that I cannot fall asleep at night, and as from this morning I’m also coughing, and now I’m dreading going to the doctors.
I commend all the good health professionals for the job they do, and my gratitude to some of them is as deeper as they saved my life a couple of times. But there were other situations.
Several years ago, during my first year in England, I required an urgent X-ray in the stomach area. This happened on the first weekend after the New Year. At first, there was no GP available. Then there was no ambulance car. In excruciating pain, I went to the hospital in a family car, a Ford Mondeo. At the hospital, I had to wait for X-ray for three and a half hours. During this time, five or six people came in, told me about the drawbacks of X-ray (as if I didn’t know myself!), and then asked this question.
“Are you sure you’re not pregnant?“
Yes, I was totally sure. But again and again they kept asking me, as if the previous group didn’t communicate my answer to the next. Eventually I received my treatment, but the sheer amount of time that was spent dangerously in vain is staggering.
And now I’m trying to book in with my GP. Yesterday when I felt really bad and could barely leave the bed, I phoned the surgery asking if the doctor could visit me at home. It was very cold, windy, and exactly at the time of my call it’s been raining cats and dogs. Going out to see a doc in such weather would only make things worse for me.
Upon finishing listening to my symptoms, the receptionist said:
“I’m afraid we only visit the patients at home in the case of emergency“.
Oh good, at least there was a confirmation that mine wasn’t the case of emergency (surely I didn’t expect it to be). That was a relief. But if it was such emergency case, surely I’d be dialling a three-digit number, wouldn’t I?
I wholeheartedly believe that education and healthcare are the two “luxuries” that must be available to everyone for free. At the same time, as we know through experience, a lot of “freebies” are often of average quality. It’s sad and alarming when the rule of freebies extends to at least one of the fields that help to build and to protect the society.