It’s Friday and in a few hours I start my journey home from Philly. I only had about 18 hours of being home last weekend after being in the UK for a week. To top it off, I was awful sick that week so it made for a horrible trip. However, the worst was a trip to a local clinic in an attempt to help myself. Here’s a little tale of my trip to London and how it made me physically ill.
It was mid-February and Tamara and the kids had been pretty sick. Somehow it managed to skip me and just hit them. But by the time Wednesday night came along, I was feeling it and waking up on Thursday I was definitely sick. Unfortunately because I had a training class to give that week, there was no sick days for me.
By the time Saturday came along, I was feeling a whole lot better but had to travel that day. I was headed to London via Toronto so I left Moncton at 7pm and thought all would be fine. My plan was to take a sleeping pill at 11pm and sleep on the plane and wake up in London feeling pretty good. Well, that never happened.
Instead, I landed in Toronto to find it in the middle of a blizzard. A freak storm hit the city and only lasted about two hours but was enough to completely screw up flights going out of the city. Delay after delay hit until finally at about 2:45AM, Air Canada cancelled the flight. Now, I fly AC a lot and I normally have no issues with them but what they did this time around was pretty sad. They didn’t bother to tell anyone the flight had been cancelled until after folks around got the notices on their phones. Then they refused to re-book everyone telling them they had to do it themselves. I then had to spend the next 6 hours or so sitting/sleeping in the airport to try and get back on the next flight.
After not being able to sleep in the airport, and not getting any rest, I felt the illness hit me again and by the time I hit London, I was a mess. I managed to get a little rest but I basically spent the entire week just barely pushing myself through my training class, coming back to my hotel, and going to bed. But after all of that, the one thing that irritated me the most was when I went to try and get some medical help from a local clinic.
I found myself at a clinic and got an appointment but was told that because I wasn’t a UK citizen, I had to pay a 50 pound fee to see a doctor. I expected this which was fine. But when I got into the dr’s office, he told me because I was Canadian there was nothing he could do for me and more or less told me to get out. I had paid 50 pounds (about 78 dollars CDN) for absolutely nothing. I WAS PISSED!
I was not able to get a refund but wrote a VERY nasty review of that clinic on the NHS website and have also written them a letter telling them they are nothing more than scam artists sucking money out of people who aren’t from their country. I never felt like such a second class citizen. I can tell you that this experience has seriously dampened my opinion of London. I always thought of it as kind of a cool place but after going through that, my opinion has been tainted.
I have two more trips there this year and trust me, if I have to see a doctor there again for any reason, I’ll be damn sure to get the facts straight before I go anywhere.
