The great cliche we tell ourselves about ourselves is that we love talking about the weather. It’s true – at this time of the year, you’ll regularly hear people say “it’s cold” or “it’s raining”, often with that slight twist in their voice. As if this was the last thing they expected.
But the other thing we love chatting about is illness. There can be a drama to illness you usually don’t get with weather. It’s not every ailment – we’re still not great at talking about mental health. But give us a life-threatening or even life-ending condition with a bit of a backstory and we’re all over it.
You’ve heard variants of this: Tommy down the road won the lotto. Five weeks later, he dropped dead from a heart attack. People will make tsk sounds and shake their heads. And say things like: just shows you, doesn’t it?
What exactly Tommy’s death shows you is rarely made clear, other than it feels like the sort of thing from which we should be able to extract a moral. It is, understandably, an attempt to make sense of the senseless.
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But we are just as capable of knocking 20 minutes of conversation out of a cold or flu. A person will tell another person that they have a dose, to which the other will invariably reply by listing all the other people they know who also have a dose. They will conclude, in an almost sinister tone, that something is going around.
I usually don’t pay much attention to these conversations because I never get sick. Which, of course, isn’t true. I’ll get the odd cold or sniffle, but like any red-blooded Irish man, going to the doctor is the last thing I consider. I’ll take over-the-counter medications and power through. And that usually works.
But a few weeks back, I kept hearing people saying that they had a severe cold and found it difficult to shake off. And this time I listened because I realised I was similarly afflicted. My usual strategy wasn’t working. My voice was starting to croak and I had a barking cough that caused Herself to frown and make that tsk sound.
Eventually, I had to accept that medical intervention was necessary. But because I go to the doctor so rarely, I’d forgotten how difficult it is to actually see a doctor. I contacted my GP, and was told I couldn’t get an appointment for another week, by which time I may well have lost my voice altogether.
The only other option was the out-of-hours GP service. Herself, having a bit more experience in these matters, schooled me in what to do. I’d ring up and tell them I was sick, and then a nurse would call back to ask me a few questions. Herself instructed me that under no circumstances should I give in to my natural inclination to minimise my symptoms. If I did that, I’d be told to make an appointment with my own GP. In fact, I should play it up a bit, but not too much. Over-egg it, and they’ll tell you to go to an emergency department. We all know what that’s like.
[ Seán Moncrieff: I’m guilty of going privateOpens in new window ]
As it turned out, I had a coughing fit in the middle of the interview which seemed to do the trick. I got an appointment, didn’t have to wait too long, had a thorough examination and was given a prescription for antibiotics. Once I was in the system, it worked excellently.
The out-of-hours GP service is, technically, for people who need urgent medical care. My need was urgent, but only because the regular service was stuffed past capacity. And I can only assume that other people use it in the same way, in turn slowing everything down. You can almost hear the system creaking as patients are forced to choose the least crappy option.
