Well, we're continuing to learn useful things for our planned long-term move to London. Yesterday we learned more about how the NHS works. I'll allay the fears of my parents by saying that Andi is fine...so read the story with a light heart:
On Tuesday, Andi was playing at the beach, jumping up and landing on her back-side in a shallow pool of water. One time, she didn't get her feet out from under her, and ended up smashing her foot underneath her. She cried, and limped around for the rest of the day. She continued to complain about it off and on for the rest of the week, so when we got back to London I called the doctor.
Since the doctor was himself on holiday and in any case couldn't do anything more than look externally at the foot, the receptionist told me to take Andi to Accident & Emergency at the local hospital. We walked in, they took Andi's name and address, and a 15 second explanation of what had happened. The nurse looked quickly at Andi's foot, and then we waited for 45 minutes. A doctor came, glanced at Andi's foot, and handed me a piece of paper and said, "Follow the signs to X-ray". We waited for another half hour at X-ray, then for 5 minutes while the film developed. They handed me the film and sent us back to A&E.
I handed over the films and sat down to wait again. Another couple minutes, and the doctor walked over. "The foot is fine, nothing's broken. Probably just a strain. Give her some pain-killer if she complains about it more."
As an outsider, it felt extremely impersonal. Nobody said more than three sentences to us, and we were just kind of shunted around. I was also surprised at how little interest the doctor actually took in Andi's foot before ordering an X-ray. I suppose he couldn't really tell whether there was anything wrong without the X-ray, but it just seemed like he was taking my word for it that there was something wrong with her foot. When we left, there was no paper-work to sign, nothing to confirm our identity, and really no trace of who we were, except that they took my word for it when I gave our address. It felt really strange.
2 comments:
Interesting how different countries handle medical issues. Each place has its own system. So glad Andi's okay.
Mom
I'm glad Andi is fine. Sometimes I wonder how our children survived childhood. I guess their good heavenly parent does indeed surround them with angels. Grace, John H.
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