An appointment with a physiotherapist eased the pain a bit and I figured that for the coming week, our hotel featured a spa and I was sure I could get fixed up there.
But then on Sunday, as if the back pain wasn't enough, I had a couple of chest pains. Given that I have four stents and a history of heart disease, chest pain is not something I like to mess around with. Normally, I'd take a nitro and see if it went away in 15 minutes. But there was the realization that I was out of nitro. And it's just not something you think about unless you're using it on a regular basis, which thankfully, I'm not.
So we decided to go to the Walk-In Center. It's not really an emergency room - it's not even an urgent care center. I'd be hard pressed to come up with a US equivalent. You don't actually have to be a UK resident to show up at one. You only have to have been in the area for a few days - and we'd been staying at the Church Inn since Wednesday. I qualified.
So when we arrived there was a couple in front of us. Looked like a mother/son duo to me since she appeared considerably older than the young man, who appeared to be in his early 20s. Even though there is no expectation of privacy, we couldn't hear what they were saying, only noticed that the young man was doing most all of the talking.
Finally, it was my turn. We approached the window. The window didn't actually go up and down or slide the way most of them do in the US. There was a notice about how violence toward an NHS employee would not be tolerated. It made me wonder if that was a common problem, but I have seen similar signs in the US.
In the US, I would have been greeted by a smiling clerk, this woman was not only NOT smiling - she just looked like she was sick herself. Thank goodness she was behind glass. I didn't need whatever she had. Her hair was stringy like she'd been too sick to wash it for a week and she looked a bit dazed and confused. It was hard to tell if she'd been worked to death or if she was well and truly sick. Either way, she was not going to win the Miss Congeniality Award.
"I'm having intermittent chest pains." I told her. That will get you hooked up to an EKG at home - and quickly, too. In Manchester they are more interested in your date of birth and your phone number.
I told her my birthday in numbers - MM/DD/YY. I wasn't thinking but that's not how they do it there - she was expecting DD/MM so ending up with a number larger than 12 in that second space threw her a bit. She also wasn't happy with my phone number. Apparently it didn't have enough numbers. And she definitely didn't like my zip code, or as they call it "post code". I let Mark take over because my "exotic" accent wasn't helping matters.
If I'd been having a heart attack, I'd have been dead by this point. But I wasn't and we were directed to sit down and wait our turn. Now, the British are a nation of rule followers. (The people who couldn't or wouldn't follow the rules were all shipped out to the US or Australia generations ago.) So I pretty much knew that everyone would be seen in the order in which they came in, unless someone came in bleeding to death. This was no way to spend a Sunday afternoon - even if it did look like rain.
I finally convinced Mark that it would be better for my health if I were to leave there rather than sit there and stew in my own juice. We later learned that if you do have a real problem, you are better off to go to something they call A&E (Accident and Emergency - the equivalent of our ER) rather than a walk-in center. This makes perfect sense. I wouldn't have known it, but the walk-in center is best suited for people who have a cold or some other malady. Not well suited for emergencies or accidents, which is why you want to go to the A&E for those. I get it now.
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