The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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4:50pm on Monday, 8th January, 2024:
Anecdote
On Saturday, I suspected I had a navel hernia. On Sunday, I was pretty sure I had. I therefore called the surgery this morning for an appointment to see a doctor.
It's actually quite hard to find out what number to call. They have an online booking service that works for every service except for seeing an actual doctor. There is a casual mention of a phone number as you breeze through the multiple menu levels, though, so that's what I used.
The way it works, you can only book an appointment on the day you want to see the doctor. This means you have to take the day off work in the hope you'll get one, and if you don't then you need to try again next day. I've no idea why this is the case but I'm sure there's a cynical reason for it. Fortunately, I'm part time and teaching doesn't start until next week, so I was more flexible than most people.
Anyway, the phone lines opened at 8:00, so I called at 8:00. The recorded message told that due to the high volume of calls I should phone back later. This happened 12 times in a row until at 8:32 I was informed that I was number 50 in the queue. Twenty minutes or so later I got to the front of the queue and tried to book an appointment. There are three surgeries in the group my local surgery is a part of, and the nearest two were fully-booked. The other one had an appointment at the unusually-precise time of 16:18, so I took it.
I arrived early, because I wasn't sure where the place was. It looks to be in some kind of former warehouse or school or army barracks; it's quite big, anyway. I checked in using their touchscreen system (which turned out to be a push-really-hardscreen) and went upstairs to wait. I was prepared for a long stay, because the later the appointment then the more time the doctor has had to overrun from previous appointments.
I got in at 16:08 and got out at 16:16. It is indeed a navel hernia (although the doc called it an "umbilical hernia", which I thought only babies got). I'm being referred to a consultant to get it fixed.
Given how long the queues are right now within the NHS, I expect it'll be Easter before I even get notice of when I have an appointment. I'll be lucky if I get it sorted within two years. That said, if I feel very unwell, it gives me a lot of pain and I start vomiting, that means it's become strangulated so I can go to A&E and have an emergency operation. On the whole, I think I'd rather avoid that.
This getting old mularkey isn't all it's talked up to be.
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