I know I need to stop it with all this retirement blogs about ‘Ireland is magical and mysterious’ stuff, and I will. But, I will just say this before moving on. Yesterday I went for my third visit in three years to the doctor’s surgery in Dingle. Some would say that’s unusual. Maybe even careless to quote Oscar Wilde. It feels like a inverted version of health-tourism we hear so much about back in the UK. But instead of our teetering National Health service being exploited by foreign people coming over to the UK to have their babies or eyeballs recoloured or a free leg-replacement or some such, It’s just little old me visiting the local GP.
I have to admit that if you’re going to be ill and need to see a doctor, this is the place to do it. You walk in and ask for an appointment and the nice lady behind the desk smiles and says, certainly, would this afternoon at 2.45 be alright? True, the last two times I walked straight in off the street and saw a proper doctor qualifications and all. This time I had to wait until the afternoon. Are standards dropping?
So yes, on this occasion I have to return the same afternoon but to me, used to booking an appointment with my GP 4 or 5 weeks in the future, it’s an offer I can’t refuse. That would be great, I say. Perhaps not quite the response she would usually get when offering an ill person an appointment but it works well for me.
You’ll be wondering why, other than because I can, I would be booking an appointment to see a strange doctor in a far-distant land. Well, not that distant but the doctor was a little strange if in only that he must have called me Peter 20 or 30 times in the 10 or so minutes that I was in there. It was as if he’d been on some training course to make the patient feel more like a person. Or that he been told the way to remember somebody’s name was to use it frequently in the first minutes of meeting. But not all the way through, that seemed excessive.
It didn’t put me at ease at all. In fact I felt quite uncomfortable. But that may have been because I was feeling slightly guilty at rocking up at ‘his’ surgery for a hat-trick of visits (although this was the first time I had seen, ‘Paul’). True, I did have a medical dilemma but also true, as he quickly realised, I’d had the problem – persistent pains in my stomach – for several weeks before our holiday. Why now he wondered? Had the pain got worse? Well I could hardly say, no I just fancied seeing a doctor. Part of the holiday, you know. So I lied slightly and suggested it had got a bit worse.
And that wasn’t a total lie because, when you’re away from home and you’re diet’s all to cock, things can seem a bit more worrying. In my case I was / am worrying I’ve got stomach cancer or some such terrible disease. Hypochondriac moi? Which I offered up as my excuse for being here. Sounded thin even to my ears.
I had seen my own GP just a few weeks ago but, knowing his annoyance at my trying to roll together more than one medical problem into one visit, I’d decided not to mention this one. I’d already seamlessly joined the Parkinson’s concern with my arthritis so decided I’d leave the stomach pains out of it. At that time I’d only had them a few weeks. So ..
But the stomach pains were / are genuine and, is so often the way of it, seem to have some connection to my diabetes. This has been an absolute hoot the last few weeks but not in a good way. After my last check-up with my diabetic nurse I was persuaded to book an appointment with my GP to review my medication.
What had happened was in a nutshell, my diet had worked well. I’d lost 3 and a half stones and initially my sugar levels had been coming down as well. Then they stopped and although the weight was reducing my sugar levels were going up again. Cut a long story short, my GP changed my medication, not back to the insulin but another tablet. Over the next few weeks, hilarious, my sugar levels dropped quite alarmingly at times and my weight started going up. Half a stone in a few weeks. Ha, laugh I nearly went to Bradford.
I’ve tried reducing the new medication to an absolute minimum but the weight, in this holiday setting, continues its inexorable rise as we all know weight does when we’re on holiday. But this is ridiculous in its perversity. A side effect of the pain is making sure I take my antacids because the pain has been producing some unpleasant side effects, some of which I can write about – acid indigestion – and some of which I can’t. I leave that to your imagination. Anyway another long story short, my Irish doctor suggests changing my current antacid tablet.
As we forgot to pick up the new tablets from the pharmacy I can’t report on any progress which is a shame*. Maybe before this blog hits the airwaves I may know a little more. For now I’ll leave this blog as a simple report of my medical experiences here in Dingle. And yes, apart from a doctor with slightly odd social skills, all good. It’s a pity you have to have something wrong with you before you can visit a doctor here. And if you’re prone to a little dementia and can’t remember your own name this is definitely the place to be.
That’s what I like about my retirement, so many interesting things happening. So many opportunities to write a retirement blog that will, I have no doubt, bring comfort to my fellow retirees. Worth being ill for, although it is playing havoc with my holiday eating and drinking plans.
*I have them now and the evidence to prove it in the form of the above photo but too soon to say if the change works. Sorry about it being on its side, technical problems.