These always seem to arranged for the most inconvenient day and time and although the letter says you can phone and change it, my experience is that you can phone, but the changing it is not possible……
One has to leave plenty of time before the appointment to allow for traffic hold-ups and for finding a space in the car park – both of which can be a regular problem. But if one arrives too early then there is a long wait to see the doctor. On my most recent appointment there were no traffic queues and someone was just backing out of a parking space, so it was easy. There were actually lots of spaces, but it is not always easy to find them when driving round. If there had been queues and parking problems I would probably have been late. I was actually only 10 minutes early and had to wait about 15 minutes in total, unlike a poor woman taking her young son, who had been waiting 40 minutes after a drive of an hour to get there! I always take something to read, but she had been playing games on her mobile with her son, but had to stop in case the battery ran out. My consultant is always quite prompt, but she says hers is always behind…….
I then didn’t see the consultant, but the more junior doctor who had made a bit of a mess of my leg and had to go back to seal some blood vessels! Didn’t feel like a good start. In fact she was quite helpful and – a year after the operation – actually told me what I should be looking for and how to do it, when checking my leg. I expect the consultants are too important to tell one such things!
Then of course I had to pay £1.60 for parking. If one arrives too early or is kept waiting too long, the price goes up. By next time I should have my bus pass, so that will make things cheaper but not necessarily easier, as buses do not always run on time and waiting for buses in the rain is no fun…..
So I get home having taken about an hour and a half for a five minute appointment. I missed choir as the appointment was dead in the middle of choir time so I couldn’t go to either the first or last half. We were supposed to be taking extra money as the music for the Christmas concert was being given out, so I will have missed starting to learn lots of that and I will never catch up and “get” those songs…… And I missed the visit of the Lycra clad man(!) who we had sponsored on a long cycle ride for prostate cancer and for whom we were supposed to provide cycling/Lycra related biscuits!
On the other hand perhaps I am not quite so grumpy! Missing the last might not have been such a bad thing. He seems a nice man but I can’t say I am very keen on the Lycra image! Learning how to check my leg properly was probably good and I am very thankful I don’t have a one hour drive or a forty minute plus wait. I just resent the waste of most of a morning for 5 minutes. But, as a bonus, if I don’t know the songs for the concert I have a very good excuse not to go, don’t I???!!!!