Me and my health centre

It’s that time of the week again when I sit down and attempt to make my life sound interesting. Not an easy task, as you will soon become aware...

Monday morning I went to my local health centre to make an appointment with my GP and to request a repeat prescription. Being in a rural area, they have a kind of sub-dispensary where you can order repeat drugs, have the order reviewed by your doctor without needing an appointment, and then collect said drugs some time later.

Monday afternoon we visited our Shrink. I'm a little ambivalent about these visits as it seems to me that we may be inventing things to complain about just to fill the time. But he’s a nice enough chap – and very good at what he does, which is somehow to put our various moans into greater perspective, so all in all it was a useful visit.

Tuesday morning I had my regular-appointment with my movement specialist. My biggest problem at the moment is picking things up from the floor. So we started with me repeatedly picking up a rubber ring from the floor. That was actually fairly easy as I can get my fingertips to within about 5 mm of the floor. The problem starts with thin things, paper money for example. I had a 50 euro note which I dropped onto the floor – now that was a real challenge to pick up, but as I'll do (almost) anything for money I kept at it.

Tuesday afternoon I went to collect my pills, and as it turns out they give me the wrong pills (an old brand instead of my current drug of choice). Being a highly efficient individual (not), I can’t remember what the right pills are called so I have to go home empty-handed and return Wednesday morning with name of medicine written down. Wednesday afternoon I trudge back go to the surgery to collect pills only to find that since I get them in bulk (900 tablets at a time, enough for 3 months), they have had to place a special order – so I need too come back again Thursday.

Friday morning I have my appointment with the GP. I've been having pains in my right hand. He reckons it could be carpal tunnel syndrome and suggests I see a neurologist. I’ve got one of those already, of course, so I'll bring up the hand at our next consultation. It’s just one more minor irritation to put up with. Oh well, I guess if I can cope with Marie for 14+ years, I can also cope with progressive neurological decay and the odd musculo-skeletal syndrome.

So the upshot is that I've been to the health center every single day his week. Exciting stuff, eh?

In between trudging back and forth I've done a fair bit of reading: What the Nose Knows, a pop science book about smells and smelling that Marie gave me for Christmas and that might actually prove useful for my own book on eating, The Fat Duck Cookbook of which I have gracefully accepted a free copy in return for writing a whole page and a half in the section on the science of cooking, and I've just started on Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Sex and Science which we bought on holiday, because we just had to.