Apr 12 - GH Heeeey!
By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga
This is incredible, I just went on a website and cancelled a doctor's appointment I made the other day, that I no longer need. I think we're living in the future!
Well, that's how I was going to start, that's how I had thought up my opening line whilst I was cooking dinner and tomorrow's lunch. I know, I was thinking ahead because I hadn't yet tried to cancel my appointment. Appointment that I haven't managed to cancel yet. A couple of days ago when I saw a little URL (read: longer than it should be) on my appointment slip, with all the info, I thought to myself: wow this is good! I don't have time to physically go down there and I have no desire to talk to a stranger on the phone and probably be forced to explain why I didn't need the appointment any longer, plus I could do it from my current position: in bed, with my iPad over my face in a position that given the amount of hours I do this for is probably either having a bad effect on my arms or a good one, I'm not yet too sure.
Instead I decided to do it standing up, like a flamingo on one leg, in the living room. Well, I tried it. I looked through the paper where they're asking for containers of plasma to find out all sorts of confusing things about me that I really, deep down, am to too afraid to know what they mean, what they do, why they need them or I don't know. Why me? Anyway, no biggie, so I find the URL, put it into Safari just how it's written on the paper, with http:// and www, hit enter and it doesn't work. So I remove the /cancel.php from the end and it turns out www.gha.gov.gi doesn't work either (I've just now found out they took out the gov bit). So my only option now, because I see the cancellation form on the site I've found seems a little confusing, is to call in. I've still got the hold music in my head from last Friday.
Let's rewind a little: So two Saturdays ago I was with a friend, having a pint, and all of a sudden I get really dizzy, so I pay the bill and walk home, the whole time afraid I would fall down the stairs by the Naval Ground and crack my head open, or even worse ruin my clothes, or even worse than that get run over by a car. It wasn't a long walk, like five minutes but by the time I got home I was convinced I was going go pass out, then I was convinced my pint had been spiked in broad daylight (not like anybody would want to do that to a fat hairy man, or I even know what it feels like) and within the half hour I was convinced I was dying. But I'm a bit of a warrior, or maybe too chicken to seek medical help, so I sucked it up, slept for a while, ate a lot of junk and was good to go, and I went out to a great hypnotist show and even had a couple more beers. All good! Well, until Wednesday afternoon. I came home from work, picked a brand new book off the shelf and decided to lay on my bed and read for a while. I was having a bunch of fun and then one strange movement and I was back in the hazy feeling from the Saturday before, then the room started spinning in what I call el barquito(when you've gone all out on a Friday night, get into bed and your body's like, "nah mate, up you get!"). For the rest of the evening I felt like I was hungover, I tried to sleep it off but woke up on the Thursday still feeling like I'd been out until five in the morning doing shots of tequila in All's Well; and by about one o'clock I couldn't take it any more, I was going cross-eyed and staring at Photoshop on my work computer wasn't working out too well. So I gave up, I grabbed my jacket, wallet, keys, phone and walked down to the Health Centre. Now, if I've been to the Health Centre more than ten times in the past ten years that's probably being extremely generous; I try to put off doctors and particularly the Health Centre for as long as possible, which means I end up going on Web MD and convince myself I'm dying. But I'm not scared of doctors, I'm scared of the Health Centre.
So anyway, I walk in, head to the counter and I'm like, "I need to see a doctor!", but apparently that's not something you can do, because even the emergency doctor is all booked up, strange, so many emergencies. But because I wasn't really in any state to just accept this and go home to feel sorry for myself I settled for seeing a nurse who would have a quick look. And so I did, I waited some time, all the while exhaling heavily not because I was trying to look and sound like I was really tired of waiting (which I realised people probably thought) but because it was making me stay a little more with it. In I went, and I was out within minutes with the peace of mind that my blood pressure and heart rate were good (I failed to tell the nurse I had already had my blood pressure checked at a pharmacy, but I don't trust machines that talk; for a pound I'll tell you you're absolutely fine too). Off to bed I went, and I have never slept so much during the day as last week; I slept most of Wednesday evening, most of Thursday afternoon and even Friday during the morning. I think by this point, Thursday afternoon, I had realised I would have to give up on trying to self diagnose and pretend I was all good, and actually go to a doctor. So on Friday morning I woke up at about eight fifteen and dialled in the Health Centre's number. And there was that stupid music. I don't even know if that hold music is an actual song or a made up tune, like a standard on phones made in China. But I much prefer when it's like Bon Jovi or something. So there I was, in my pyjamas, cooking eggs when fifteen minutes into this stupid music somebody finally picks up the phone. I ask for the earliest appointment, eat the eggs faster than I should've, jump in the shower, jump out, get dressed and run to the Health Centre; because after fifteen minutes listening to that stupid music I wasn't going to miss this appointment, I know how (unnecessarily) golden these appointments are.
Now, as I said earlier, I've only gone there a handful of times in my life, so I don't know the doctors, don't know how the whole coloured zones work and I'm not even one hundred percent sure of what I'm meant to do when I get there. But I somehow manage to sort it out and I sit down to look around at the people in the waiting room. There's a woman who's clearly in some back pain and I feel bad for her, and there's a guy who definitely looks like he hasn't slept all night and really needs a doctor, I open up my phone's selfie camera and I don't even look half as bad as these people, but then on the other side of the room there are people who look like they're just here, as young people say, for the lols, or for the "laughing out loud". One lady is all like "oh I've had this appointment for weeks", and the only thing I can think of is that how can you know you're going to be ill so far in advance? Sometimes I wake up fine and by noon I'm like "I'm feeling a little weird" and by six o'clock I've got a full blown man flu situation going on. My point is I had no clue at eight when I woke up. I try not to breathe a lot - because I'm sure you get more ill from just being in that place - and five minutes later I'm lying on a gurney with a doctor trying to purposefully make me feel dizzy. I really can't fault the doctor though, he was great! Better than the one that told me when I was fourteen or fifteen and walked everywhere that I should walk everywhere. Within about ten minutes he'd figured out what was wrong and was writing up the little paper, the one that has the broken link for cancellations on it. But I could sense he was rushed, I kept asking about other things which he kept dismissing, things that could've been linked to my dizziness. But in the end he told me in was all in my ears and asked me to go outside and get a couple of appointments: one for the ears, one to get a blood sample (something which, believe it or not, I have never done in my life #serialavoider). I shake his hand, grab my coat and go outside to be greeted by a lady at the counter whom at first didn't believe I had actually just been in with the doctor and then proceeded to give me two appointments so far ahead in time, that I thought were completely unacceptable, given how I was feeling, but I was not prepared to argue. I was angry though. The blood test can wait but if my ears are causing me my dizziness is waiting another week really that great an idea? Am I meant to be unfit for work, or even worse, suffering at work?
I walked out of the Hell Centre feeling pretty angry, and hungry, hangry, and starting to feel a little woozy, and just as I walked out onto the street it hit me. About four maybe five years ago I also had problems with my ears and got it sorted out at the College Clinic (not a #sponsoredtweet), so within five minutes I was at their reception and within seven I had an appointment for that same afternoon. By three I was out of the clinic, and by about five I had completely readjusted and was feeling A-OK once again. And that brings me to where I am now, trying to cancel this appointment for sometime at the end of this week that I no longer need, worried I'm going to have to sit through another fifteen minutes of that stupid hold music, and I'm asking myself a bunch of questions:
Is it really necessary that I had to go to a private clinic for a five minute procedure that the health care system I'm paying for through my taxes didn't think was important enough for my wellbeing and could wait another week?
Is it essential to offer people the chance to book appointments weeks in advance? And should recurring visits, like for repeat prescriptions (which I'm assuming is probably the case most of the time), be treated like normal appointments?
Am I wrong in assuming an emergency doctor should be there for emergencies, and not be booked up like a regular doctor? I mean, I was just dizzy, but I could've had something worse and I wouldn't have been seen to.
Should all these things drive us to clog up the A&E at the hospital for things like my case of dizziness? As it's the only other option.
And now the four most important questions I've got:
Can we change the hold music?
Can we get stickers for good behaviour at the doctors and for not grunting in the waiting room?
Is the doctor going to drink my blood? Is he a vampire?
Can we sort it all out, please?
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