Doctor's Appointments.

[Sean Regan]

Our surgery invite their eight thousand patients to play "the appointment game."

You phone up at 8.00 a.m. on the dot Monday to Friday and whoever gets through by continuous dialing, people often using a couple of mobiles and a landline to improve the odds, stands a chance of "winning" one of the few appointments that are available.

You can estimate your chances by going on the website where there's a rolling diary which tells you which doctors will be available on any particular day, on some occasions this can be as few as two.
"Patient Access" an excellent on-line booking system which worked well was closed a year ago.

Having failed to get an appointment when I really needed it, when I had a problem with my back, a couple of months ago, I had a recurrance of the problem last Thursday.
I'd had enough of the pain by yesterday, so I phoned the surgery and asked to speak to the practice manager.

The receptionist's "What do you want him for?" got short shrift from me.

"I'll tell him when you put me through."

I reminded him of the problem I'd had before and the impossiblity of getting an appointment and my e-mailed complaint about it.
So he said he'd get the "On call doctor" (a position of which I had never heard) to ring me. She did a couple of hours later. Having listened to my symptoms, she told me to come in to see her at 4.30pm.
After an examination, she prescribed some strong anti-inflamatories, which seem to be working, but I won't be right for anything physical for at least a week or two. So no golf for a couple of weeks and not much gardening apart from using my garden vac for the leaves and possibly the Flymo next week.
She took my blood pressure which was OK and weighed me.

"Ooo! You're the same weight as you were the last time we weighed you in 2010!

I must have been half a stone over the weight I'd liked to have been then, as I think I am now.

It had its amusing moment.

My wife, ever concerned that I should cut down on anything strenuous at my age, questioned me on my return.

"Did she say anything about not going up ladders?"

I replied, "Ladders didn't come into the conversation."

 

[Oliver Buckle]

"Did she say anything about not going up ladders?"

I replied, "Ladders didn't come into the conversation."

Hope you feel better soon.

 

[DirtMechanic]

My wife actively looks for illness. This go round it was the allergy testing, a small test but with seemingly hundreds of irritants. She hit some of them, and while reading to me the littany list I was getting the idea that somewhere in that office, perhaps a closet, was a hidden astrologist. We basically live in the woods. Maybe a city high rise apartment would provide a better environment for allergens. No doubt age is impressing upon us that time brings change though. Gotta roll with the punches. But I am never moving to a city.

 

[Sean Regan]

My wife actively looks for illness. This go round it was the allergy testing, a small test but with seemingly hundreds of irritants. She hit some of them, and while reading to me the littany list I was getting the idea that somewhere in that office, perhaps a closet, was a hidden astrologist. We basically live in the woods. Maybe a city high rise apartment would provide a better environment for allergens. No doubt age is impressing upon us that time brings change though. Gotta roll with the punches. But I am never moving to a city.

Because of her MS and other medical problems, my wife is more or less housebound. She does manage to do quite a bit around the house and spends hours on her decoupage card making hobby and watching TV shopping channels, ordering stuff (paying for it with her own money) and getting me to send half of it back and pay the postage. (She and Sharron who delivers the stuff swop birthday and Christmas cards and presents) I don't really mind, I wouldn't like to be as incapacitated, a few days was enough for me.
But she worries about everything. Apart fom health issues, she has no other worries. She does a lot of washing, far more frequently than necessary. The tumbledryer seems to be on for half a day. She isn't able to hang out washing and I'm not going to.
We've no financial worries. Despite rapid inflation, we've not cut back on anything.

I try to keep any small problems away from her. At the moment our combi boiler heating system is losing a bit of pressure.

The boiler is only three years old, bit the radiators and pipework and the original combi I had installed in 2000.
Over time, the radiators can start to weep a bit usually from the unused stops at the tops. You can be oblivious to this as the leak is so small it can evaporate before it starts to run down the side of the radiator.
It's a bigger problem but unlikely if the leak is in the actual pipework. That could mean carpets and floorboards coming up to find it.

At the moment I'm putting in the equivalent of less than half a pint of water every two days. If the water pressure gets too low, it just means the boiler won't fire up until you add more water. If I can't find the leak, I'd rather put up with adding more water every two days as it only takes about twenty seconds.

You can tell if there's a tiny leak in the plugs of the radiator if you see oxidised copper around them. they become a bit crusty.

So today having told my wife that I needed to check on the heating, I went around them all putting a quarter of a turn on them with an adjustable spanner.

This one near my wife's chair in the lounge was a bit difficult to get at as it's behind a cover and there's "stuff" in front of it that has to be moved.
I was in the middle of this and my wife had gone into "worry mode" and was asking a few questions. I wasn't too pleased.
So I said. "Look love, I'm doing a job, not making a naffin' YouTube video with commentary, I'll tell you whsat I've done when I've finished." She did see the point.

Whether my efforts have been succussful, I'll find out later when I check the pressure gauge for any slight loss. I've done all I can at the moment.
It would be possible to check out the pipes below the ground floor as there's a couple of feet clearance above the concrete rafts on which all the houses in our road are individually built.
Forty years ago I installed a trapdoor in the floor of what became the place for the tumble dryer and "vacuum cleaner store" (don't ask!).

A case now of just lifting out the one piece bit of laminate flooring to get at the trap. I've been down there before a number of times over the decades, either to add a couple of spurs to the ringmain when we needed more sockets and once to check for leaks when we had a similar problem with the previous boiler but found none. At 82, I could still do it but I don't fancy it as I'm not certain I'd find anything. So I'll carry on as we are for now. If we change the carpets again and the situation is as it is, I might have them checked out at the same time.

 

[Sean Regan]

Hope you feel better soon.

Thanks for that.

I seem to be on the mend, but feel a bit tired, unusual for me but it might be the medication, I'm staying off the paracetamol, just sticking to the anti-inflamatories. I'm hoping to be recovered enough to play golf next week.