Well its that time again when I have to pop into the local hospital for a check-up on my Vampiric eye syndrome. Only today’s appointment was not at my usual first thing in the morning time, but at the unhelpful time of 11am. Now this is both a bonus (I can work from home for a while before having to go for appointment, which means less time spent in the office) and a hindrance (If you’re not there early enough in the day, then parking is next to impossible.).
I arrive at the hospital in plenty of time and try and park in the car-park near the eye outpatients, No Room, So I try the several staff car parks close to that end of the hospital (I may, or may not have acquired a staff parking permit for my car) No Room. OK, so there is a car-park half way along the hospital complex, No Room. The staff car-park near the middle of the complex? No Room. The huge main car-park at the other end of the hospital to where I need to be? No Room. The overflow massive car-park that’s been built on the far end of the main car-park? No Room. At this point I would have happily parked on a manger in a stable!. Right there is a bit of wasteland at the end of the overflow car-park where people park if there is no where else left? No Room!! At this point I remember I’m driving a 4×4 and park it “off road”
Its Raining, and I have approximately a 3/4 mile walk through the various car-parks to get to the hospital, and then a 1/2 mile walk to get to the opposite side of the hospital where my appointment is in 18 minutes! Did I mention its raining?
So I get into the eye outpatients slightly bedraggled from the rain, and out of breath from the speed walking. I report to the receptionist who disappointedly is not the cute friendly one who always remembers my name, but some other one. I explain I have an appointment, confirm my address to prove who I am and get asked :-
Receptionist: “Have you moved house since you were last here?“
GN: “err no! I just confirmed my address to you?“
Receptionist: “Have you changed surgery or doctors since you were last here?“
GN: “err no! I would have informed you, I just want my appointment! please can I sit down“
Receptionist: “Its sometimes like you live here isnt it?“
GN: “err yes” *smiles disarmingly as I back slowly away without making any sudden movements to a seat*
The waiting game begins, So I start writing a blog post about an update to my Vampiric eye syndrome, not this blog post, oh no. I wrote a post of several hundred words, using the wordpress iPhone App, and saved it to “local drafts” only for it to vanish into the void. I then get called for an eye test before moving to another waiting area to wait to see the actual doctor.
I should point out stupidity of the eye test station. You go in and read the letters off the board for them to measure your eye sight level. Only you are there due to some eye problem, Myself I’m on eye drops that tend to dilute eye and make everything fuzzy, so have yet to go into eye test room when I could see the board with the drop affected eye. I also have them confused as there are two identical test rooms, with identical eye charts, Yet if I am in the right hand room I can see several lines further down the chart than I can in the left hand room.
So I make it to the final waiting room, and boy does this room live up to its name, and then some! I was here for over an hour. It’s not their fault really, the eye outpatient department is the busiest department in the hospital (Well maybe apart from A&E on a Saturday night) So the place is always packed to capacity. Then you have the fact they have a special infectious eye clinic on the second Wednesday of the month (to add even more people to the overcrowdedness) And to top it all off today, they were a Doctor down, and then a second Doctor was called out to an emergency, meaning the remaining Doctors had to see their patients as well as the missing Doctors patients. So this meant I had an hours wait, and there was no WiFi available for me to use, and no phone signal.
So, to recap, I had a stupidly long walk through the rain to get here, I’ve been waiting bored out my head for about an hour and a half in total. And how long am I in with the Doc for? FIVE MINUTES! Long enough to say Hi, her to check my eye, declare its looking good, and lower my drops, and say she will see me in two months.
I hate Hospitals!!!!!!!
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