My First Experience with Nationalized Health Care
Today, I had my first experience with a public health care system. As I’d felt really sick for multiple days at this point (I won’t bore you or gross you out with details), I went over to the Soho Centre for Health and Care. Anglo American Educational Services had suggested it to me.
I had to fill out a sheet with my symptoms and such and turn it in. It was explained to me numerous times that since I was from a different country, I’d have to pay a 50 pound consultation fee. Sure, no problem, okay. I was told the wait would be about an hour, but in reality, I chilled out in the waiting room for about an hour and a half reading Russell Brand’s autobiography (really profane, hilarious piece) before I was seen.
I then spent about 15 minutes talking to a very nice lady nurse practitioner. I felt like maybe some of the things I was saying were lost in translation- she didn’t really seem to understand what I meant at first when I said I had “thrown up,” or that I had ADD. I also am uncertain how many of the medications cross over here, as she seemed a little confused by the list of meds I gave her. To be fair though, when she told me I had a temperature of 37.8, I just gave her a very blank look. (This is over 100 degrees F, wow ack, I really do have a fever!)
There were a couple things she did that made me feel very awkward. I had to kinda beg her to look at my throat (my mom thought I might have strep). But in the end she seemed very thorough and good at her job.
Essentially, she thinks I have some sort of gastric virus. I was told to drink tons of liquids and stay inside for a few days. If I eat, I’m supposed to eat like bananas and toast. (Toast? That’s one thing I’ve never been told to eat by a doctor before, how very strange) She said I should stop taking all my “non-necessary medications” for a few days too. And I was like- what? I’m not on the meds for a lark you know, what do you mean by that? I was told to get off my allergy medicine- not sure how that’ll go, considering I woke up yesterday barely able to breathe through my nose.
When I asked if I should go for Gatorade or Powerade or something (she advised me to drink flat Coca-cola), she was like- no that’ll be too harsh on your stomach. But I promptly stopped at Sainsbury’s afterwards and got a whole bunch of liquidy things, including Powerade, since every doctor I’ve ever had in my life (including my mom) has told me to have Gatorade while I’m sick.
Really, I must be an awful patient to some doctors or NPs, all smart-alecky and thinking I know better than them. I just happen to think my mother’s a better doctor than they are at all times, so I listen to her instead.
Anyways, afterwards I paid my 50 pounds (I suppose this is an instance where I could say quid instead of pounds, but honestly I don’t get the point of the word). Then I left. The whole experience felt quite frankly like a visit to Mason’s student health clinic- which isn’t necessarily a flattering comparison, but isn’t an awful one either. You wait a very long time to see someone who’s not a doctor and sometimes makes you feel very awkward and then you get out without paying as much money as you’d pay to see a regular doctor.
It seems like a decent system for like today, when I wasn’t deathly ill or anything, but I could really see how it could cause problems for people with more serious illnesses. Health care is not a topic I know tons about but I know it’s definitely a big issue in the States- like how everything can be expensive and privatized or whether universal health care plans, like President Obama’s during his campaign, could really work.
It was just a very interesting experience, over all.
Another thing I might never get over here is the selection of ethnicities on the paperwork you have to fill out. There’re like 10 rows and it starts off “White- British, White- Irish, or White-Other,” then it goes on to all sorts of variations on “Mixed,” “Black,” “Asian,” etc. I feel like it might just be easier to write out the ethnic origins of the last three generations of your family instead, the system they’ve got now is just so confusing.
I ended up marking myself as “White-Other,” though I was very tempted to write a little bit about how I’m American with a majorly English and German background. But I refrained. I found out recently that here, people are much more likely to call you a Nazi jokingly if you say you’re from Germany than they are in the States, and that’s really an insinuation I like to avoid at all costs. My ancestors weren’t even in Germany during the World Wars, thank you very much.
And then I went to Sainsbury’s, where a giant teddy bear wearing a name tag with “Mazhut,” on it directed me to the proper check out line with a motion of some plastic flowers. Bizarre.
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