I almost died walking round the shivuk supermarket on Wednesday.\u00a0I was trying to get the shopping\u00a0done asap so\u00a0I could go home and crawl into bed when a very sweet\u00a0employee saw Yaron asking for food and invited me to feed him in their cosy office.\u00a0 I was touched by this, normally would have taken up her offer but I thought I was going to pass out so we grabbed our groceries and ran.\u00a0I went straight to bed and found it a bit odd to be shivering in layers of clothing and blankets in 27 degree heat when it dawned on me that I may have a fever.\u00a0Funny, when you dont have a winter, you assume you dont get ill.\u00a0I have long blamed all illness on the weather (a habit learned from my israeli father who if you tell you have a cold\/cough\/throat infection\/the black death will tell you “it’s\u00a0ze change in\u00a0ze\u00a0wether”) so I just assumed I would be good for a while.<\/p>\n
Anyway after 2 days of fevers and a throat so swollen I could barely eat\u00a0I decided I would have to either see a\u00a0doctor or sell my kids.\u00a0They do say\u00a0“Feed a cold, starve a fever” but nursing mums\u00a0don’t have\u00a0that option.\u00a0So I dialled clalit,\u00a0 our healthcare provider.\u00a0After 4 months I thought I had figured out the totally random medical system here, but I was wrong.<\/p>\n
“Press 4 for English”\u00a0 (Ok that sounds promising, my brain is a bit woolly so if I can speak in English, then why not?)<\/p>\n
Then I get this moronic woman who asked me each question about 25 times.\u00a0 At first I thought it was me, feeling rough and not focusing.\u00a0 But then I realised we were on a loop.<\/p>\n
“Which doctor you want to see”<\/p>\n
“Well I am not sure who my family doctor is,\u00a0 I think its Doctor Svetlana.\u00a0 But I havent seen her yet as we have only been her a few months.”<\/p>\n
“Which doctor pleeze”<\/p>\n
I repeated the above, but slower.<\/p>\n
“It says here Dr Meor”<\/p>\n
“Yes, but he’s a gynacologist, I dont need to see a gynacologist as I have had my baby now, I need a family doctor as I am sick.”<\/p>\n
“Ok, are you prejence?”<\/p>\n
“I’m sorry?”<\/p>\n
“Are you prejence?”<\/p>\n
[bear in mind I pressed 4 for English]<\/p>\n
“Do you mean Am I pregnant?”<\/p>\n
“Are you prejence?” she\u00a0said again.<\/p>\n
At this point I gave up and asked her “do you mean am I pregnant?” in hebrew.<\/p>\n
“Yes – prejence”.\u00a0 (The woman clearly had no ear at all.\u00a0 I was starting to feel like Henry Higgins)<\/p>\n
Oh for christs sake.\u00a0 “No!!! I am no longer pregnant I need to see a doctor!”<\/p>\n
“Ok, in ten minutes thats good for you?”<\/p>\n
“Er, might need a few more than10 minutes.”<\/p>\n
“No, its 13 and ten minutes”<\/p>\n
“Oh right, yes thats perfect.”\u00a0 (I think she meant 10 past one)<\/p>\n
“In the kanyon.”<\/p>\n
“What?? Why would I go there??? My local clinic is in Ramat Rabin!”<\/p>\n
“But the gynacologist is there.”<\/p>\n
Oh god.\u00a0 Deep breaths.\u00a0 Can’t yell it hurts too much.<\/p>\n
“I don’t need<\/em> a gynacologist!! I need to see a normal doctor.\u00a0 In Ramat Rabin!”<\/p>\n “You need to call your clinic.”<\/p>\n COULD SHE NOT HAVE TOLD ME THAT AT THE BEGINNING??? AND SINCE WHEN DD THE RULES CHANGE??? HOW AM I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT APPOINTMENTS WITH FAMILY DOCTORS ARE MADE WITH LOCAL CLINIC??!<\/p>\n [By the way, if you have made it this far in my blog and you are not my mother, well done]<\/p>\n Anyway I called the clinic and of course they had no free apointments so told me to come and see the nurse at noon.\u00a0I am pretty sure nurses are not allowed to prescribe drugs but figured she was some sort of screening system where if you are really <\/em>ill she passes you onto some poor doctor who forfeits their lunchbreak.\u00a0 (great system)<\/p>\n I was right.<\/p>\n Whilst waiting to see the nurse AND the doctor (turns out I still had a high fever on day 3 so she passed me along) I noticed another mother and\u00a0little boy\u00a0in the waiting room.\u00a0After my last post I was informed by various family and friends that if you make aliyah, nits become a fact of life.\u00a0The idea is to keep them down to a manageable level, as you can never totally eradicate them.\u00a0From a distance, one might have thought that this mother was simply stroking her unwell\u00a0sons hair lovingly, but I could see she was using the time to have a good old nitpick.\u00a0 Anyway I felt really sorry for this poor kid as during his appointment with the doctor old look just in time to see him projectile for the second and third<\/em> time. It was so bad even the doctor shrieked.\u00a0 I was quite impressed at the mother, she just frogmarched her poor child to the nearest sink and cleared him up, no apology.\u00a0Quite right, not her fault and definitely not his.\u00a0A british mum would have been all “I’m so terribly sorry…” and looking around nervously.\u00a0\u00a0In Israel,\u00a0nobody justifies themselves.<\/p>\n The doctor, however was not so impressive.\u00a0 (I did feel a bit bad for her as her shoes got splattered).\u00a0She stood there, calling for someone to clean up the mess (it seems cleaning up puke is not on her job description) but of course everyone ignored her, eyes down, the nice older receptionist on the phone and the useless young one doing her usual thing of Looking Really Professional But Not Actually Doing Anything and even\u00a0the smiling arab cleaning lady wasnt around) so what does the doctor do? Closes the door on the evil sick and MOVES OFFICES!!!<\/p>\n Lovely.<\/p>\n Anyway I almost lost my appointment to some woman who pushed in front pretending not to know I had got there first (I remember her walking in so there was no way she was before me) but experience has taught me that you have to jump up so I explained that I had a baby at home that would need feeding soon (a small lie as he could have coped a bit longer but I was about to collapse in a heap on the floor). Anyway the doc gave me an antibiotic prescription and told me to take acamol (israeli name for paracetemol) or optidrin (useless drug, doesnt seem to do anything but they love it here) and I somehow dragged myself home only when husband asked what was wrong with me I couldnt tell him as I had felt so awful I had forgotten to ask her\u00a0for a\u00a0diagnosis.<\/p>\n Anyway the antiobiotic she gave me is commonly given for tonsilitis so my hunch was right.\u00a0 It’s a bit weird though, I haven’t had it in TWELVE YEARS, not since my gap year.\u00a0 I have no idea why I would only get it in Israel?? I remember trotting off regularly to some doctor in the old binyan clal in jerusalem to tell him that once again my glands were up.\u00a0He would prescribe me antibiotics and\u00a0I would spend a week on my aunts sofa in bayit vagan watching the ice dance and sleeping 18 hours a day. On one occasion I must have been there a while as my Em Bayit rang up to enquire if I was planning on ever\u00a0coming back to Orot (the girls college where I was studying in the middle of nowhere) and I told her I was sick. “But can’t you be sick here?” she asked, pleasantly.\u00a0I told her in no uncertain terms that there was no way I was going to be ill in a room with no tv and no decent soup.\u00a0I think she probably\u00a0thought I was a bit not-in-the-spirit but I was past caring.<\/p>\n Of course Husband hasn’t been so sympathetic, as he has been a bit under the weather himself and not best pleased at being left with\u00a0two kids and all the housework.\u00a0 But now that my disease actually has A NAME I finally get some sympathy.<\/p>\n “Oh tonsilitis” he says.\u00a0 “I had that when I was little.\u00a0 It was AWFUL.\u00a0 I was so miserable my mum went out and bought me\u00a0comics and ice cream.”<\/p>\n “Great!”\u00a0I said brightly, “so you can understand that Ifeel crap and\u00a0need to rest and eat soup.”<\/p>\n “Oh but I was a kid then ” he says.\u00a0 “I’m sure its not so bad when you are an adult.”<\/p>\n Oh for goodness sake what does a mum have to do around here\u00a0to get some sympathy????????????????????????????<\/p>\n By the way, thank you to all those who called up worried that we might have been affected by the Carmel mountain fires.\u00a0Thank god, we are fine.\u00a0 Haven’t even smelt the\u00a0smoke this time.\u00a0But it’s a huge tragedy and the lack of rain in this country is becoming dangerous.\u00a0 We have even gone so far as to join forces with our arab brothers and pray for rain.\u00a0And institute a fast day.\u00a0 So far not a drop.\u00a0 Hard to imagine in snowy England.<\/p>\n We will keep you posted.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I almost died walking round the shivuk supermarket on Wednesday.\u00a0I was trying to get the shopping\u00a0done asap so\u00a0I could go home and crawl into bed when a very sweet\u00a0employee saw Yaron asking for food and invited me to feed him in their cosy office.\u00a0 I was touched by this, normally would have taken up her … <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8889,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-aliyah"],"yoast_head":"\n