!@*§#%¡~ doctors

**WARNING**
This post contains language your mommy told you not to use.

Sorry to bore you with more cute baby stories, but Lola is just figuring out that her rubber toys squeak. Or rather, she had accidentally stepped on them a few times in the past and scared the piss out of herself but is now trying to make them work. I'll hold one and squeak it a few times, which drives her nuts, and then she'll spend the next 15 minutes with it in her mouth making her own squeaky noises, whining and talking at the toy in her mouth. She'll get there, and when she does, we'll wish she'd never figured out how to squeak them!

As for my health, I paid a General Fucking Practitioner €50 quid to tell me I needed to have my blood drawn and an ECG monitor of my heart, possibly a 24 hour monitor if nothing showed, and I should go downstairs and make an appointment to do that next week. And that was after skipping out of the room in the middle of the visit and leaving me to wait for a good 15 minutes before bounding back into the room, all apologies. What is most remarkable is I'm the one who told her I'd like my bloods and heart checked to begin with. How is it that she steered it around to making it sound like she came up with that course of action? The only thing she did think of that I didn't was checking my thyroid.

I must say that I am both impressed and wholly unimpressed at the same time with health care here. Here you can see a GP readily for about €30-60, depending on the desirability of your address and for the more everyday stuff, chemists (or pharmacies) are pretty good about helping you sort that rash or chest infection or any other minor malaise.

But here, also, there's no point in developing a relationship with a particular doctor that I can see because the bloody GP doesn't do much of anything but send you elsewhere, like to a specialist, and they charge you each time for the privilege. If you walk in the door of a doctor's surgery... if you so much as eyeball the dog-eared copies of Hello magazine in the waiting room, you'll be charged. And there's no point in protesting because that's just the way it is here.

I've also been unable to find a OB doctor I really like, because we don't really have OBGYNs here. You just roll the dice and hopefully find someone who doesn't give you the creeps. I've been to three doctors regarding pelvic exams, birth control concerns, etc., and it's been a complete crap-shoot.

The first was the creepiest thing I've ever experienced. I was referred to a doctor in Dublin, a private clinic (which is supposed to mean it's cleaner, less crowded, a little more expensive but worth the cost), and was inspected by a man who was not unlike a rat, sweated a little, and his office window looked right out onto a street of houses. He asked me to disrobe and get on the table, bottom pointed at the window. He didn't close the blinds, there was no frosting on the glass, nothing. There I was with nothing to hide, lit up for all to see if they cared to. I'm not prude but please understand it's an awfully vulnerable thing to do full stop. And after going through that humiliation, I mentioned to him that I was concerned about an apparent lump in my breast. He said he wasn't really the man to ask about such things (clearly he knows nothing but ladies hoo-hoo's) but if it would help, he would examine it. "This guys a professional, and he couldn't be in women's medicine and not have a clue about breast lumps, could he?" So I decided to let him examine me.

He insisted that I take off my shirt and my bra. He stood me in front of that bloody window again so there was good enough light. He stood back and looked at me. He then came up and put his palm flat against my breast. All the while he kept up a running commentary, "Well, they look ok, there's not too much difference in the size or shape between them. No discoloration of the nipples and they're the same size. And I'm feeling here and I can tell you I don't feel anything."

I began to cry. I was feeling incredibly violated. I stepped away from him and put on my shirt in a hurry. He thought I was crying because I was worried about the lump. I was crying because I felt like this guy had just had a chance to do something different and took every possible minute to enjoy it. I mean really, who in their right mind goes feeling for a lump in breast tissue with the palm of their hand? It would be like trying to locate a lump in his testes with a fucking spatula.

And might I add that when you go to there private clinics which promote themselves like they are the high end of women's health, when you get there they are grotty, dark, and badly in need of a lick of paint and some new carpeting. And actually, what's with the carpeting? Aren't medical clinics supposed to be a place you can wash easily? What's with the dingy carpeting? It almost makes you hungry for the sanitised, pristine clinics in the US where they seem hell bent on killing every last germ.

Another clinic I had the misfortune of visiting was no different. I was thinking along the lines of Planned Parenthood; not the sparkliest place, but it does what it says on the tin. It was more like a Medicines Sans Frontieres tent, but in the basement of a Georgian house. Another dimly lit office with a window that any passer-by could look down into as they passed it at street level. There's me on the table leaving nothing to the imagination.

And I've been told by every doctor I've been to here that we Americans get pelvic exams too often, that every 3 years is enough. So prevention is out of the question... I see what's going on here. They don't want to see you until there really is something wrong with you. Sick people won't balk at paying 50 quid for just walking in the door. If you were to turn up every year, they couldn't fleece you for nearly as much because they'd only get one visit out of you.

Hell damn wanker doctor thieving wankers. Shut up the hell you damn.