Monday, February 19, 2018

Punk and the price of medicine

When Johnny Rotten (he of the Sex Pistols infamamous infamy) walked off stage at the curtain of  The Pistols last gig of a somewhat self-immolatory American Tour in January 1978, he crouches down, turns to the crowd and with undisguised loathing uttered the words "ever get the feeling you've been cheated?" And that was that. Within a year Sid Vicious was dead from a heroine overdose whilst trying to explain he had no idea how his girlfriend was shot dead. Next to him in the hotel room. But he was innocent. 

However I digress.
Occasionally, like everyone in life, I will need to
visit the doc. I used to avail upon the services of of an excellent international physician based quite close-by however, subsequent to his retirement, I took the plunge and went local with a new clinic recently established not too far from where I live. And also by now my Japanese was at a standard where it was no-longer overly intimidating to put my hands in the life of a foreign language. And so today I made the journey with what had the unpleasant feelings of the on-set of flu season inside my head and, feeling miserable and a little pathetic, I walked up the road the two minutes it took to get there.

Having waited less than thirty minutes for the doctor to invite me in (and remember this wasn't a scheduled visit, I had no appointment, I had just walked in) soon he was taking blood pressure, providing a general consultation and handing me over to a nurse to check for the H3N2 virus (this being executed by what seemed to be a three foot syringe straight up my nose that even the nurse said must have hurt). The swab was tested then and there in the lab and I was declared to be plague free a few minutes later. The doctor then prescribed two sets of medicine that he said would see off the worst over the next few days (oh, and provided a repeat prescription for another lurgy we've been working on recently). The drugs were despatched by the receptionist in about ten minutes and I was on my way having been charged a total of a little shy of $25. And if your country's healthcare isn't the moral equivalent of Japan's, then get out your old vinyl and ask yourself the question "ever get the feeling you've been cheated...?" 






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