Maybe it’s because I’m a Cavanman but I just hate handing over my money to GPs. In fact, I hate having anything to do with the health service because the treatment starts from the premise that the patient is a complete moran and incapable of any judgement to do with their own health.
Over the years I have sustained a number of sports injuries. When bones crack an X-ray is called for. I know that and every doctor I’ve ever gone to has sent me for an X-ray as a matter of course.
I did something serious to my ankle during a football match last Christmas and it just hasn’t healed. There is something wrong in there and it needs an X-ray before anybody starts eliminating any cause.
So I need an X-ray. The famed one-eyed Albanian knows I need an X-ray. You wouldn’t have to have attended school for a long morning to know that I need an X-ray.
But I can’t go to an X-ray shop and have an X-ray because the rule is that you need a doctor to say that you need one.
So with my teeth gritted, I trotted off to the doctor hoping the guy with the cert would do something to justify my trip.
Firstly, I had to wait 40 minutes. (My time, of course, is worthless).
Then into the surgery I went.
“I’ve got a bad ankle,” I said.
“Mmmm”, she said.
“I’ll take off my shoe and sock”, I said. So I did.
She never touched my foot.
“You need an X-ray,” she said.
I never said a word – although I was afraid she might hear the grinding.
She wrote a letter. Helpfully she also wrote me a letter so that I could go to a sports injury specialist. Someone, in other words, who could actually help me.
The whole thing took about four minutes (not counting the 40 minute wait).
For this I was charged €40.
Can someone please tell me the moral difference between this and having your pocket picked, because I’m damned if I can.
This is a scandal.
Your body is not your own
X-RAYS remain the property of the Government because the plain people are too stupid to be trusted with them.
So it seems to me. I had this argument out with a hospital worker a couple of years back.
“I want to take my X-ray with me,’ I said. “We don’t give patients their X-rays,” she said.
“Why not,” I demanded.
“Because we don’t,” she ended the conversation.
And that just about sums up the whole sad situation.
Going private
I rang up Beaumont to book my X-ray.
They mentioned July 4. That was the best they could do.
I wasn’t happy. They told me to ring the private clinic. I did.
How much for an X-ray? €45, they said. When could I have it? Tomorrow, they said.
I’m bewildered. Why doesn’t the state simply send people over to Beaumont Private. The state surely can’t do it for much cheaper than €45. Instead they make people wait six weeks.
There’s another scandal