The Doctor would not like to see you now.
Trying to get an appointment now involves a labyrinthine process that fries the brain.
‘I now understand why people are pulling their own teeth out,’ I grumbled to the husband recently. Actually ripping their teeth out as opposed to metaphorically pulling their hair out (which is what I’m doing) . Quite the medieval conversation starter for a busy early morning. The reason for this is that I had re-entered the labyrinthine process of trying to get a Doctor’s appointment.
I appreciate that this emerges alongside the news that women will finally be able to access free contraception direct from their pharmacist without having to see a GP first in an effort to free up GP appointments. This is great news and it looks like we can consult the pharmacist for sex and a sore throat. Not actual sex - I don’t think that’s on the radar of Boots yet and the consultation rooms are tiny, but then - aeroplane loos…. I digress. All well and good, but sometimes when you’ve gotta see a GP, you’ve gotta see a GP (after you’ve agonised about whether it’s something you could consult a pharmacist about in front of a snaking queue).
I’ve been very fortunate in that I am not a frequent visitor to the GP even with three kids, where I’ve learned over the years that Calpol alternating with Nurofen is a panacea for many things along with plain white rice, bananas and a flat Coke. Irrationally, I therefore think that when I do turn up, I’m going to be embraced by the GP thanking me for not bothering them for years and be on their list of ‘reliable decent patients, to be taken seriously’ and not blacklisted (a bit like freelancing).
However, the other week I was presented with a child with a sore lump on their head. This small bump has been present for years and has been filed away in my ‘should this be something that I need to get looked at’ ever-expanding mental drawer. However, now it was looking inflamed.
I’m unable to play telephone roulette - where even though you’ve dialled in just before 8am, you still happen to be 50th in the queue - because my local surgery has now established an online triage system. This means that, unless you are unable to complete the online form (the implication being that if that is the case, you are from an alien planet), you must embark on a series of exchanges spread over several hours.
I fill in the form describing the issue requiring medical attention. As a writer, this is hampering, even though I’ve got more words to play with than a tweet (or do we now call it a ‘Xeet’). Am I being too balanced and not exuding enough maternal panic to warrant prompt attention? Do I need to use the word pustule over lump? Am I being too British with my understatement so that I sound like I’ve just emerged from the WRAF in 1918? ‘It looks a tad different and is rather sore, but don’t want to be an awful bother, so just bump us down to the bottom of the queue old gal.’
My phone pings an hour later. Hurrah, an appointment! No. Please could I send a photo of the lump which will help me get quicker treatment. Well, no it won’t because I’m not yet in the habit of taking photos of strange swellings meaning I have to text my daughter at school and tell her to photograph the top of her head and send me the picture. Given the school does have a policy on phones, the message doesn’t get picked up until lunchtime, along with my other messages checking that she’s feeling ok and that there is no untoward oozing.
I go back to the form (that’s now become a running exchange) noting the stern warning not to send photos of breasts, anuses or genitals, and send the photo thinking that from this, you can’t assess how big the lump is, whether its hard, soft, moveable. But hey, maybe an expert eye will just tell me it’s something unpronounceable in Latin and it requires antibiotics. Job done.
Some three hours later whilst I’m on a treadmill trying to escape pitching misery, I get a message and the exchange goes something like this:
Looking at the photo, it’s best if you come in to see a clinician at 3.45pm.
It’s 3.30pm and my daughter’s school is a 15 minute drive away. I am also unable to swoop in an pluck her from her lessons. Leave of absence admin is required.
I’m afraid my daughter is at school and I’m unable to get her back in time for this appointment. I could do tomorrow though.
Despite the fact that I’m unable to bend the space time continuum, I feel like the most ungrateful, difficult person on earth. If I want an appointment, the equivalent of Willy Wonka’s Golden Ticket, I should scream ‘Hallelujah!’ and be able to make anything happen. I shouldn’t, God forbid, start imposing my own conditions, such as the sheer impossibility of making the appointment!
I’m eventually given an appointment for the following Monday, this being a Thursday. I try 111 to see if I can get an appointment at my local urgent care centre, which used to be walk-in, but alas, no longer. This proves fruitless as my daughter needs to be physically with me for the person on the phone to make an assessment.
My daughter returns home from school on the Friday evening exhausted from lack of sleep the previous night owing to a sore head. I take another look at the lump which has got distinctly worse: it’s grown, is oozing and scabs are forming around the area (apologies if you are scarfing down your bento box). She’s in a lot of discomfort and now all I can think of is our tropical adventure over the summer and the woman who had a huge worm removed from her brain.
There’s no other alarming signs, temperature is fine etc and I decide that going to A&E on a Friday evening will be grim. Now we have a child in situ, we try 111 again. Once they have established she is conscious, we’re told that a clinician will call us back. They are working through the night so it will be any time before dawn. If no one has called us back by then because they are too busy, they’ll close the file. Great! How comforting.
My husband gets a call at 2am and has to rouse our daughter from her sleep, basically it seems, to check she’s still alive. Once 111 have established that, he’s told a GP will call back within the next six hours. The algorithms reign supreme and it’s screamingly apparent to us that she needs to be looked at by an actual medically qualified human.
By 7am on a Saturday morning, once I’ve established that no one has called us back, I decide to take my daughter to A&E, which is what I’ve been doggedly trying to avoid, being one of those dull people who abide by the rules applying the words ‘Accident’ and ‘Emergency’ quite literally. Then I remind myself about the piece I had read about someone turning up to A&E for dandruff and surmise that we might be in a queue with someone with a paper cut. I’m also listening to the maternal gut instinct, that is so often belittled but is surprisingly accurate.
We queue behind a woman who thinks she’s broken her finger making the bed (ouch) and a toddler who has apparently been vomiting throughout the night but is happily stuffing down a bag of crisps. We’re swiftly triaged to see the urgent GP on site who diagnoses some sort of fungal infection. Obviously now all I can think of is The Last of Us, which I couldn’t cope with watching apart from the amazing love story episode. A prescription for antibiotics lands on my phone screen. Door to door (including a 15 minute drive), it’s been an hour.
When we arrive home, my husband tells me that the GP did eventually call but was told that we’d left for A&E as we had become exasperated with waiting. After my experience, I can see why A&E centres are becoming so overwhelmed when you can’t get to see your own GP unless you jump through 40,000 hoops. I kept the ‘gold dust’ Monday appointment, because the urgent GP at hospital was so cursory (as I understand they need to be as the waiting room swells). It still wasn’t our GP, it was a paramedic, but we did at least have ten precious minutes of advice and a proper examination.
However, I can’t help thinking of all the people out there who don’t want to be a bother, who give up on forms and ‘please press one of the following options’ because all they want is a human voice or someone that can make an empathetic intelligent assessment without a computer prompting them at every step. Computers offer many things, but they don’t offer care.
Quite possibly, they hate people with heavy boots and waterproofs trudging through their offices.
I feel your pain, how frustrating!
I couldn’t quite believe it when I went to book a GP’s appointment recently and found out that the Voicemail service, which you have to ring, is only ‘live’ between 09:00-12:00. Why oh why? It’s a machine!!! Surely it can take messages 24/7!?!?
😬😫