Saturday, 29 October:

NHS Part Deaux. I went to the National Health Service walk in clinic again today. The same one that saw Suzanne a couple of weeks back. Two days ago, I started coughing again, only really hard and had some wheezing and shortness of breath. Since it got worse, instead of better, I decided to go get it checked out. So this is my first visit to a doctor in over two years for sickness. After a short triage, where no vitals were taken, I was told to come back in an hour for an appointment with a GP (General Practitioner). I came back early and waited for about thirty minutes past my appointment time before telling someone. (I worked in a hospital; I know that nothing ever runs on time). Ten minutes later I was seen by a Spanish doctor. Again, no vitals were taken, however, he did listen to me breathe through his stethoscope. After listening for a bit, he said that it sounded like I had a viral infection that weakened me enough to allow for an upper respiratory infection and that he was prescribing some antibiotics to take for the next five days, if it doesn’t clear, go see my doctor. Well, I am happy that the antibiotics should help clear up what I have, but am not so happy about the lack of triage vitals. If I was running a 106 fever, which is pretty brain threatening, they would never have known. While I have not received great care in most urgent cares, I at least felt good about the fact that they checked my vitals. Blood pressure, temperature, some basic history questions are apparently not needed by the NHS. Considering the media frenzy over the Asian Bird Flu, I find the lack of interest appalling. Of course, I don’t buy into the hype and worst case scenarios here are that it could kill as many as 50,000 if an outbreak occurs in the human population, that is still less than one percent of one percent of the overall population. (I wonder how many die each year due to a typical flu season). Back to the point, Either they are WAY ahead of U.S. medicine and have moved beyond the equipment used for a hundred years, or they are woefully negligent. I am voting for the latter at this point. Although, I was asked if I smoke three times, I wonder why? And they asked if I had asthma twice.