Entered on 28 August 2003 at 8:53 a.m..
The NHS does well
In a rare feat of efficiency yesterday, I managed to convince my Paraguian Doctor to fill in my GT medical form and to order a chest X-ray to verify that I am still TB clean, took the X-ray and returned to work all within 2 hours. Not bad eh...
However the lab technician did tell me that my films wouldn't be read for 10-14 days. I also have to pay some small undisclosed administrative fee for having the doctor fill in my forms since they aren't standard NHS. So the adventure has begun, and hopefully it will end before I have to leave.
High points of my doctor's visit include the lecture on the evil's of fee-for-service medicine which lead to the unnecessary irradiation of young women and all of my impending thyroid problems. We also had a discussion as to which immunizations I'd actually had, i.e. what the acronyms meant on my WHO immunization card. I felt that as a health care professional he should know, and he felt as the person who was injected I should know. At first he refused to give me the X-ray because he thought I'd had the TB vaccine (which I've never heard of), but as soon as he found out I hadn't it all changed. I think he honestly wanted to slap a mask on me. I didn't think it wise to try to explain about my 6 months of INH treatment (more acronyms that I cannot explain). I could point him to the CDC pages, but then I'd probably get another lecture about the evils of capitalist medicine.