I’ve been monitoring a slightly sore nose for a few days and last night I decided it was sore enough that it’s probably infected. So I wanted to see a doctor and hopefully get some antibiotics – or reassurance that it’s not infected.
But it’s Easter weekend, and my GP isn’t open again until Tuesday. There’s a walk-in medical centre up the road, and when I checked during a wakeful period during the night I saw they opened at 8:00. They don’t take appointments, you just show up and wait for the next doctor to be available. So I decided to get up at 7:00, have a quick breakfast, and walk up to wait at the door before they opened, to ensure I wouldn’t have to wait long to see a doctor.
I got there about 7:30 and was the only one waiting until about ten minutes to go, when a queue began forming behind me. The woman behind me was fiddling with her phone, and expressing some frustration, muttering something like, “They must only activate the app when it opens.” I asked her, “Do you need an app to get an appointment?” She answered no, you can go to the receptionist, but they try to direct you to download the app.
I really hate this sort of thing. No way I want to download and install an app on my phone just to access a service like this, and doubly so for a place that I’m not a regular customer. I figured if the receptionist tells me to install an app just to get an appointment, I’ll just refuse and ask to have one without it.
Eventually the door opened and we went in. I saw next to the reception desk were huge billboards on either side, with a QR code to download the booking app, but I ignored these. I was first in the queue, so approached the receptionist first, and asked to see a doctor. She didn’t mention the app, but simply asked my date of birth and name and found my record very quickly (I’d been here once before for a vaccination), and booked me in. It only took 30 seconds at most. But by the time she’d done this, she said that I was seventh in the queue, and that being Easter Saturday there was only one doctor on duty! So… in the time it took me to walk from the door to the reception desk and get the receptionist to enter me into the waiting list, six other patients behind me had used the app to claim places in the queue ahead of me! 😡
Fortunately, a couple of other doctors apparently arrived, and they churned through the patients very quickly, so I was seeing one just before 8:30. He confirmed my nose was infected and prescribed some oral antibiotics and a topical ointment. I left with the prescription (at zero cost, thanks to Australia’s Medicare system). Next step was to find a pharmacy where I could buy the medicines. I searched online and found on down the street that said it opened at 8:30, so I walked down there, only to find a sign stuck to the window saying that it opened at 9:30 on Easter Saturday!
I walked back up the street, checking the windows of all the pharmacies—there are four of them within a few blocks. They all had later opening hours for the holiday, but I found one that opened at 9:00. By now my wife had appeared with Scully, having walked up to get some coffee. So we sat together at a cafe for half an hour until the pharmacy opened.
Unfortunately everyone else had the same idea and when I arrived at about 5 minutes past 9, there was a queue of about 8 people ahead of me with prescriptions to be filled. So that took some time, and I didn’t get home until almost 10:00. I had some antibiotic tablets and applied the ointment, and then changed to go for a 5k run.
After that and post-run stretching exercises I had a shower and it was almost time to go to the supermarket to pick up my online pick-up order. I couldn’t do this on Friday as usual because it was Good Friday and the supermarkets were all closed. And the supermarket was very busy, because tomorrow it’s closed as well for Easter Sunday and so a lot of people need to cram their shopping into Saturday on this weekend.
After all that I finally did some comics stuff in the afternoon. I helped my wife cook a lentil mushroom loaf which we’ll be taking to lunch at her mother’s place tomorrow, as a vegetarian alternative to the roast lamb. And for dinner I made enchiladas, with spinach as we had some leftover fresh spinach that needed to be used up.