A Medical Procedure on the Wallet

This last couple of weeks has seen a succession of blows to our bank accounts and transportation arrangements, starting with Diver Dave's leg.

Or more specifically, his ankle which received a thorough drubbing when he fell down a mountain. He was running down it on purpose at the time, as a form of recreation, so adjust your sympathy levels accordingly. He is in training for a local event known as King of the (afore mentioned) Mountain. While the incident occurred a few weeks ago, it's only in the last couple of weeks, where it's resolutely stayed the same tree trunk size since it first happened, that we concluded Something Had To Be Done.

To begin with, Dave manfully subjected himself to two sessions of rigorous torture at the hands of the physio lady at around $70 a groan. Whilst she was able to treat his right ankle (yes, he injured both of em), she eventually realised she was inflicting too much eye popping pain on the other, now elephantine, foot for him not to go to the doctor's ($50). Luckily, the doctor is in the same building as the physio and Dave's workplace so it took a matter of minutes for dave to nip out of work and be told he needed both an x-ray ($70) AND an ultra sound ($140).

At this stage of the arterial bleed in Dave's wallet, he could have considered that getting up again immediately after the fall and continuing to run back down the mountain may not have been such a good idea after all. Nor indeed were the attempts to maintain his fitness levels by going swimming three times a week. And the chances of him actually being crowned King of the Mountain in July were now looking considerably bleak. As was the chance of him going away on a much anticipated diving weekend this weekend - not with a cast on anyway. Aww.

All this medical stuff has brought home how much we take the NHS for granted in the UK. If you don't mind waiting a bit it's all free, although you might come home with some hideous wasting disease you'd never heard of before, but I think that's a small price to pay. I suppose Dave did get his appointments very quickly but, with money being on the tight side at the moment, he was loath to fork out so much wonga. The system here is that everyone pays for private medical insurance. When you need treatment you have to shell out for it first and they reimburse you MOST of it at a later stage. Most people go to a doctor which deals with bulk billing. Now I'm not totally sure what this involves but to the patient it basically means you don't pay - just your insurance company does. Unfortunately, none of Dave's practitioners were offering this so he has to wait three days - allegedly - to be reimbursed with two thirds of what it cost.

As it turned out, there was no fracture and, whilst the doctor recommended no diving WHATSOEVER, Dave chose to ignore this in favour of the physio's advice that it would probably be ok. Her way's more fun - spending a whole weekend out on the freezing cold high seas, getting mashed about by the dive boat's landing board and all the sharks. Woo hoo!