Thursday [11]

Afternoon all.

11. Heaps of fun this morning

… dealing with Amazon, Morrisons, the NHS and my gas supplier, all at the same time. By phone and text.

Forgetting all of these except the NHS, let’s focus on them.  I am due for some nastiness next week, which followed a phone consultation with a pharmacist weeks ago, as my GP and most of the others are neither seeing patients nor phone consulting.  Don’t wish to put the docs down, perhaps it’s some pandemic thing.

Right, there was no follow up with details, so I phoned the clinic to which I’m being sent. They said contact my own health practice (what used to be called a GP).  They would not take my call unless I was sexually dysfunctional.

All right, that’s a fun one. So openly, publicly here, I can definitely admit to being dysfunctional in many ways, but sexually isn’t one of them.

So it was onto the phone to the practice. Long queue but worse was the elevator music as the Americans call it.  Except it wasn’t … it was a 4/4 snare drum beat, max volume, bash, bash, bash, phone needing to be held an arm’s length away … WTF was that doing coming through the phone?  Whatever happened to music?

All right, got through and once I get one of those girls, things are usually all right from thereonin, and this was no exception.

I explained the recorded message at the other clinic, the sexual dysfunction etc. and she said she’d try and get back to me. Ah, said I, you can’t, unless it is your official number, which is in my address book as GP, then it will come through. Otherwise it is blocked for security reasons. This is why the NHS always texts.

We could try email, she said.  I volunteered mine and she said oooh, it’s missing the sh on our screen.  (Some other girl I presume.). Anyway, she fixed that.  She said she’d find out about the appt and text back.

She did, asking me to respond.  But I couldn’t because my phone gave no reply option, only a link below.

I called again and got straight through to her. Hallelujah.  I explained that my phone is not smart and my ipad, which is internet, blocks me accessing anything medical. All I can do is phone or text but actually, the practice does not let me text, nor email, so it’s phone only from my end, fun if I have a heart attack before 11 a.m.

Anyway, said I, thanks for rebooking for another day, yes, that’s fine. She said … I’ll text you with the details.  Which she did.

I said remember I can’t respond, so I’ll say thanks now. She said I realise, do I not, that she was not able to get through to the other clinic, they’re accepting no calls.

As I mentioned, I mentioned. Well we got there in the end. I suppose booking me in was different to contacting them.

Yes.

Well thank you, you’ve been great.

Just doing our job. By the way, I’ve contacted our office manager over the music. She chuckled.

Did I enjoy all that?  Well yes, I confess … it was fun. How sad am I? Sheesh.