You know that expression - a shot in the arm? It's meant to mean a 'pick me up' or a tonic, a booster to the morale or metaphorical Red Bull to the chi...if you will? Hmmm. Well, this shot in the arm left a little to be desired in more ways than one.
I'm back in Perth after my wee sojourn in the Great Southern and it's time to take care of some personal admin that seemed to drop off the bottom of the To Do list before I departed Blighty's shores - namely inoculations. I phone up a medical centre in downtown Perth and make an appointment to have some jabs and also to have a doc look at my gammy left ear, you know, the one that's been intermittently deaf since I got rudely slapped down by a Mexican wave (watery version rather than the sporting variety) in the Baja...in October last year! That was easy.
I'm at the medical centre a few days later and in I trot to see the 'healer'. She's a Turkish woman (she had a Turkish flag on her desk so I think it safe to assume) of about 40 and looks like Morticia Addams.
I suggest the jabs I think I need but she thinks it prudent to go through where I'm going to be and when. I start to tell her (as far as my loose travel planning will allow) and this is where things start going awry. She's trying to write all this down (although I'm not exactly sure why) and she's getting all the places and times completely wrong. Something like this:Quack: So you will be in Singapore in February?
Me: No, March 16th?
Quack: Right. And when will you be in the Philippines?
Me: I don't think that's on my agenda.
Quack: Where? Singapore? I thought you said you were going in February?
Me: No, I said I was going in mid March.
Quack: Where? The Philippines or Singapore?
Me (exasperated): I'm not going to the Philippines!
Quack: Right, OK. So when are you going to be in Singapore then?
Me: I think this is the same horse I came in on?
Quack: Huh?
Me (to self): Why did I say that?
As you can no doubt imagine, this went on for sometime in a very roundabout fashion covering various dates that she seemed to make up and places she thought should be on my travel itinerary.
In the end she calculates I need some jabs - pretty much the ones I suggested I needed when I came in. And about three months' supply of anti-malaria tablets (yeah, I'm on the Larium so if I go stark staring mad and you never hear of me again, you'll know why. Either that or I've just got bored of writing this bobbins). Anyway, where was I?
Great, that out of the way, I bring up the subject of my sinister deafness. She then seems to go off the handle and says I have taken up more than my allotted time already - i.e. the 20mins I'm getting charged AUS$99 for! Without me even trying to get a word in edge ways, something I would have needed a big lever and an opera singer's voice to do, she says: 'She's sick of people coming in and thinking they can tell her their life history.' WHAT?
When I eventually get to pipe up, I tell her that I had explained my medical consultation needs to the receptionist who seemed to think it would be fine. And I hardly think getting her to look in my ear constitutes 'telling her my life story'. She refuses to budge and keeps showing me her MS Outlook schedule, like I give a flying fig about that. I suggest that the reason the consultation had taken so long was primarily due to her lack of ability to grasp anything I had previously said and if truth be told the whole rigmarole seemed utterly pointless. She gets into a slightly more frothy lather at this point. I decide to take some extra time anyway, even if it's not productive in getting my ear fixed, and proceed to argue with her for some 10mins about the whole stupid shebang.
Eventually she manages to shoo me out of her room and to the reception desk where she hands the receptionist the list of jabs for the nurse to administer saying as she does so that (and I quote) 'We do not run a value for money service here!' Too bloody right. It then dawns on me I have no idea how much the jabs are going to cost me and here the crowning glory of this bitch's rudeness is exhibited. She rolls her eyes as if my asking how much I'm going to have to pay for the jabs (not to mention the 'oh so professional' consultation) is just another example of my wasting her time. I lost my rag at this point and I think I scared the receptionist somewhat, who at one point was nodding in agreement with me (maybe for fear of her life). I seem to remember questioning the doctor as to whether it is so unreasonable to know how much I am expected to pay before I agree to payment (maybe in a little more heated terms). I'm pretty incredulous at this point.
Anyway, it was A LOT of money. I won't go into it just now but suffice to say it was more than all my internal flights in Oz amounted to (and there were five of those). What do they say when they are about to jab you? 'This may sting a bit' Too frikking right!
Anyway, the nurse was jolly nice and that made all the difference...almost.
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