So. After Sarah's birthday dinner, Rosie and I took a taxi to A&E. I signed in and waited. The sign on the window said that the wait was currently about three hours, so Rosie and I just talked. It looks like there was a 2-for-1 special on foot injuries at N&N Hospital in Norwich tonight, since of the approximately 20 other people in the waiting room, approximately 15 had foot injuries (including three prisoners!). We found this very funny, in a tragic, ironic sort of way.
After only an hour, I was called in to the exam room. I began to tell the lady my story from the beginning, about it occasionally bothering me once or twice in London when I did a lot of walking there, and then it hurting much more after Scotland...but she just got frustrated with me. I was just trying to give a clear picture! Do English nurses have something against me?! Finally we got to the part where I take off my shoes and she jabs at the little swollen protrusion. According to this nurse, stress fractures in the big toe area are actually uncommon. She told me they couldn't do anything for me, and that I needed to go see a GP (general practitioner). AKA, this means THEY SENT ME BACK TO THE UEA MEDICAL CENTRE. I tried to tell her that they were the ones that sent me here, but she said I just needed to book an appointment with a doctor this time, not a nurse, and that I didn't have to tell them what it was for, that I just needed to book it. I tried not to burst out laughing.
The icing on the cake, though, was that though she told me it actually probably WASN'T a stress fracture, she thought it might be arthritis (it runs in my family like crazy, though I'm a tad young), or...get this: GOUT. Gout, like the disease that primarily affects men aged 50-80 who eat a lot of shellfish, foie gras, and fine wine. THIS ISN'T GOUT. The symptoms don't even fit! I mean, I take what I read on the internet with a grain of salt, obviously, but GOUT?! If I go back and see a UEA doctor and they decide to test me for gout, I'm walking out and I'll wait to see about all this until I get to America in December: they slapped a cast on my brother a few weeks ago and he was out of the office in ten minutes. All I want is an x-ray or an MRI. I think I'll see if I can ask directly for that...I'll try to mean business more when I go in to see a doctor. I want them to tell me "here's a splint/cast to immobilize it so it doesn't get worse, see if that helps" or "it's nothing, on your bike." If they shuttle me somewhere else without a DIRECT referral (IN WRITING) to someone that has an x-ray machine in their possession that they're willing to use on me, fine. But I'm tired of going between people.
But it gets better! I try to login to the appointment booking system with UEA online...and it's currently DOWN. I guess I'll just wake up 10 minutes early tomorrow and try again. BUT REALLY.
Despite all this, I refuse to lose my faith in socialized healthcare. Coming to the conclusion that it's actually kinda crap based on one hilariously annoying experience with it....just goes against everything I stand for. I still believe, America, so don't think you've lost a radical liberal. Unless I'm bleeding out of the eyes and they say "eh, it's not so bad," I will still believe in socialized healthcare!
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