On the undeniable importance of magazines in a doctor's waiting room

Dear fans,

I have to apologise. I have neglected you lately. Not that I don't enjoy writing, not that I don't have anything to write about, mostly I don't have a lot of time to sit down and write. Now I am ill, in bed, what better time to bring this blog back to life?
This year again, I hoped for a while that I would bravely go through winter without being sick. How foolish of me. And again, this year, when my body started to show signs of weakness, I chose to ignore them. And so, for a week now, I've been waking up with headaches, each morning a little worse than the previous day, but always thinking "I'm going to be alright, I'll take some painkillers, eat healthy stuff, drink loads of tea to wake up and I'll make it through the day. In a few days I won't have to worry about a thing." And just as every winter, I was proven terribly wrong. I let the headaches get worse and worse until the pain spread to my ears and my throat, and until I woke up and just couldn't pretend I was fine anymore. I called in sick this morning and spent the rest of the morning lying in my bed in a nearly comatose state, trying to find the courage in me to get up. Some hours later I managed to get up and eat breakfast. A nap later I managed to reach the bathroom for my morning/afternoon shower. And the day went on like this, step by step, patiently, until I finally managed to get out of the house and go, as my friend and co-worker Leanne had advised, to the University health centre, where doctors would be more likely to treat me even though I'm a foreigner and I still don't have my national insurance card (I guess I should thank British administration? British post? Dunno.)

I got there and saw all those signs and posters telling people to stay home and not see a doctor if they suspect they have swine flu. Even though I knew that my symptoms were those of tonsillitis and not any kind of flu (tonsillitis is an old friend of mine), I started to have doubts and wondered if I should go home before I got scolded by an angry doctor for ignoring the pandemic procedure in place. Those signs everywhere were very intimidating!
I decided to risk it anyway. I saw a secretary and asked to see a doctor, or a GP as they say here.
"I'm sorry Miss, our GPs are all fully booked today. (checking her computer)... And tomorrow as well. (more computing). There's nothing until next week. But listen, if you call the health centre tomorrow morning between 8:30 and 12, maybe they'll manage to give you an appointment or to examine you over the phone."
...
QUOI ? How can a general practitioner be "fully booked"? Is it too much to ask to go to a health centre when I'm ill, and expect to be seen by a doctor the same day? Because where I come from, that's how it works. You're sick, you go to the doctor. You sit in the waiting room. You wait, you wait, you wait, you may and you probably will spend several hours in the waiting room and read a dozen gossip magazines that you would otherwise never read, but in the end, you will see a doctor. And the doctor won't leave the practice until they have seen all the patients in the waiting room, no matter how late it gets. Does it not work like this in this country? Do you have to plan your illness in advance so that you can make an appointment to see a doctor? And what's the deal with phone examination? Should I skype a doctor and show them my tonsils through webcam? These are all the thoughts that were rushing in my mind as I politely thanked the secretary with a smile and walked away.
The hell with that. I need to see a doctor today, and I will find one!

Thinking that this is the kind of situation where an iPhone would be handy, I walked down the Lisburn road hoping I would see a doctor's practice somewhere. I didn't find any but found a pharmacy where a kind pharmacist pointed me to a big health centre on that same road. I went there, crossing my fingers hoping that my lack of national insurance card will not be a problem. They asked me if I was "registered".
If I am quoi ?
Ok that's the other local thing. When you move to a new place in the UK, you're supposed to "register" to a doctor, a process that can take several weeks. I learned about that yesterday. Many thanks to the British Council for mentioning it in one single sentence of our hundred page information booklet for teaching assistants but never mentioning it during all those information meetings where they went on and on about all the documents we needed to produce. The secretary there, I have to say, was a very kind lady, and said she'll try and arrange an appointment for me today if it is an emergency. Is it an emergency? I was going to say no, as a reflex, because to me, the word "emergency" is synonym of immediate life-threat, like an axe planted in the back of the head, or the heart that stopped beating, something like that. I *just* have terribly painful headaches and my tonsils so infected that I can barely swallow my own saliva.
But I figured out that if I said it wasn't an emergency I might not see a doctor in weeks, and that might actually threaten my life. So I said please those headaches are killing me can I see a doctor today please please please? She said ok, handed me the pile of documents to fill in for registration and said the doctor will see me at four.
Hallelujah!

I took a seat and answered a series of questions about my life, my consumption of cigarettes and alcohol, my job, my reasons for being in the UK, how long I'm planning to stay in the UK, my ethnic background and so on. And my national insurance number, which luckily I know even though I don't have my insurance card yet (many many many thanks to my friend Leanne for telling me that I would find this number on my pay slips or my tax documents. I am very grateful.)

And that's when I came to a terrifying realisation: there were no magazines in the waiting room. Not a single one. No newspaper either. Nothing.
QUOI ? A doctor's waiting room without anything to read? What are they thinking? Of course I could have brought one of my many readings I have to do for that literature class I'm taking, but I'm not the kind of person who remembers to take a book with them when they go places where they might have to be sitting and waiting at some point. But again I blame this on this country's crazy health system. No magazines in the waiting room? I never read magazines except in trains and doctors' waiting rooms. A waiting room without magazines is simply unacceptable.

I settled for my iPod's klondike game. A few games later, I noticed that fancy screen on the opposite wall that displayed information about the practice, and that sometimes rang, and the name of a patient appeared. "Mrs F Maguire - Dr Cassidy, room 7". Ha. That's fun. Maybe I should keep an eye on this and see when my name is displayed. And some more games of klondike later, it happened. "Miss CJ Ehrhart - Dr McMuffin, room 5". Oh yeah, CJ is back. Sorry. I've never been called "CJ" before moving here, it had never even crossed my mind that I could be called this, and now, well it amuses me every time. CJ. It sounds like the name of a teenage character in an American soap opera. CJ. CeeJay. I love it.

In room 5, Dr McMuffin (thank goodness for him that's not his real name) was waiting for me. He first asked me if I could speak English, to which I said yes and started listing all my symptoms, telling him about my medical history and getting out all my occasional asthma medication that I had brought with me to show him, thus avoiding the intricate enterprise of explaining in English what I take and when. (I am absent-minded, but sometimes I'm impressed by how organised I can suddenly get. I had even spent some time on wikipedia and wordreference before leaving home to make sure I know crucial words about my medical history and medication, like "salbutamol", "tonsils", "corticosteroids" etc.). Dr McMuffin was so kind that he not only examined me (my guess was right, it's tonsillitis) but also did my registration, so that I wouldn't have to come back another day to do it. So I had to answer some more questions about my medical history and that of my family. That's always the tricky question. I never know what to answer. My family are fucked up when it comes to many things and health is one, but as far as I know, we seem to be immune to cancer and heart diseases. So I generally answer no to those questions about "family morbidity". (what a creepy word!). Dr McMuffin was so kind that I decided to give him a little treat.
"I don't know if this is relevant to your file, Doctor, but I had spinal surgery in 2002."
"Why was that?"
"Scoliosis."
"When was that again?"
"2002."
(doctor carefully writing this new piece of information down on the file)
"Does this cause you any trouble?"
"No, not really."
"Get up please and lift your shirt."
(executing myself. Doctor looking at my back and commenting:)
"Very clean. You can sit down."

Now you people probably don't get what happened here. Those were the words that were uttered, in a very neutral and professional way, but the subtext is far less matter-of-fact. So let me translate this to you.

"Hey Doctor I have something exciting for you! I am one of the rare patients of a big, massive, cutting-edge spinal surgery!"
"Really? What kind?"
"Scoliosis. Spine stabilisation."
"COOOOOL that's a good one! I had heard of it in med school but never actually met one in my career! And I bet you have a ginormous scar, can I see it?
"Sure! Go ahead!"
(lifting the shirt and taking a long hard look at the scar)
"WOAW THAT'S BADASS!"
"I KNOW!"
"MY COLLEAGUES WILL BE SO JEALOUS THEY'RE GONNA WET THEMSELVES, I CAN'T WAIT TO TELL THEM!"

I know how to make doctors happy. This is like giving a 5 year old a ticket to Disneyland or the Willy Wonka factory.

Then Dr McMuffin handed me the prescription and told me I can get the drugs in the pharmacy on the first floor, it would cost me £3 each, so a total of £6. I waited a while for him to tell me how much I owed him for the examination, but he didn't say anything and showed me to the door instead. I hesitated, started walking away, turned around to see if he was going to ask me for money, but he never did. Ha?

I walked down the flight of stairs thinking how handy it is that the pharmacy is in the same building, and how brilliant that I apparently don't need to advance medical costs. I stepped into the pharmacy, handed my prescription and took a seat. A minute or two later, a lady called my name, and there were all the drugs I need to get back on my feet and go back to work next week. I went home, went straight to bed and had a look at my two boxes of drugs. They both had a label stuck on them with my name, the date they were given to me, where they were given to me, and how and when to take each drug. The labels were typed, printed, and stuck to the boxes. Nothing like the messy handwriting of a pharmacist scribbling on the box. Then I noticed something very interesting: one of the boxes was initially supposed to contain 14 tablets. But the doctor prescribed 20 tablets. So they added 6 tablets in the box. In France, they would have given me 2 boxes of 14 tablets each and at the end of my treatment I'd be left with 8 extra tablets that I'd never use. But here apparently there is no such waste of medication.

So in the end, I have to say, there are some good things about the British health system. I was a bit taken aback by the whole "fully booked, see you in three weeks, when you're dead" thing, but everything turned out well in the end, and now I have the exact amount of medication I need with my name stuck on it! Brilliant.

But then something hit me. I had spent less than 5 minutes in that pharmacy, virtually nothing compared to the hours I had just spent walking from one health centre to another, praying to the gods I will be seen by a doctor, and then sitting in a waiting room playing a dozen games of klondike until my name was finally called. When I left the pharmacy, I saw something I didn't expect to see there.

A pile of magazines on a chair.