25th of April 2018
I am back.
At last!
Finally I seem to be recovering properly from the flue I got the 14th of March.
This has been complicated from day one.
I don´t get the flue every year, but when I decide to have it you can bet on it that I will make up for the years I did not have it.
I have been coughing; I have had a running nose and running eyes. I have been in bed and out of bed; I even went to the health centre to see my family doctor. Because I did not have an appointment I was left with some student. A student I have seen several times while at a proper appointment with the doctor, but this time it was just me and her.
She listened to my lungs!
Nothing there she said.
I opened the mouth for her and she put a stick into my mouth. I almost vomited but she was persistent. I want to see your throat, she said.
Somehow I managed not to vomit but it would have served her fine if I did.
At this stage I was becoming more than a bit pissed off. I was getting furious.
I told her I had been sick for 3 weeks.
I told her that now I had been in bed the last 3 days and was getting worse every day.
I sounded like a man who smokes 3 packs of cigarettes every day.
Horrible!
She phoned my doctor and told him there was not much wrong with me. I had a bit read in the throat and had just been sick 3 days! Jesus, I had just told her this was the 4th week I had been sick.
Idiot!
They, my doctor, which I did not get to talk to, and the student decided I needed some medication.
I had gone to the health centre to get antibiotics.
I asked the student when she gave me the paper if this was that!
Yes, she said.
I went to the pharmacy here in Penela and got the medicine.
When the pharmacist came with the pills I looked at her.
Is this it?
Yes!
We looked at the prescription. Yes, there it was, black in white.
IBUPROFEN.
Seriously!
You need to go there again tomorrow, said my friend at the pharmacy. This is not what you need.
First of all, I could have saved 4,5 EUR and gone to the pharmacy if I wanted IBUPROFEN.
Secondly, I cannot, EVER take these pills. NEVER. They are dangerous for my health condition and I have on paper that if I go to the hospital for some reason, they cannot give me IBUPROFEN.
All this is recorded in my health history in the health centre.
IDIOTS!
I was sick, I was angry, I waited one day and then I wrote an e-mail to my doctor. He has not replied, of course not. I was complaining.
I did not go back to the health centre. Of course not. Why should I?
I spoke to a friend of mine yesterday and his wife got the same treatment!
Now I have to find a private family doctor. I will have to pay 60 euros per consultation, but that will be worth it.
Having been suffering for 5 weeks is enough. Never again!
The day before yesterday was in fact the first day when I could talk more or less normal without coughing and I could even sing a little bit.
Doctors are there to help you, or so I thought.
Maybe they, some of them, think that we are just boring idiots.
Thank god for my heart surgeon and the doctors at the hospital who take me seriously and know I am not just a bore, they know when I complain there is something serious going on.
My handsome wonderful heart doctor suggested I should look for a fine general doctor. Of course there is a code of honour and he could not recommend anyone. But he wants me to be in good hands and I am going to find someone.
Most likely I will look for someone close to my new future home in the north. That will be more convenient.
So, this has been me, complaining.
Now it’s me apologizing.
I have been writing a lot in Icelandic these last weeks and I apologise for that. There are huge problems in the country connected to the elderly and those who don´t belong to the ELITE.
In one of the richest countries in the world there are 70 percent of those who are over 67 living under cost of living.
The other 30% are the ELITE.
It is devastating to see how the people believe the promises made before election and think everything will be ok.
I don´t know what will happen in the country, but there could be another bankruptcy closer than we think. The rich, the 200 families are raking in just as they did before the disaster 2008.
I am just one voice but I cannot keep quiet while there are starving individuals in the country. It does not matter if they are senior citizens, children or just ordinary people. They do matter to me and I feel for them.
10 thousand elderly people have moved to Spain to try to survive. They have left behind family and friends but this is their only option. The younger generation is also fleeing; they go to the Scandinavian countries.
How can this be happening in one of the richest countries in the world?
Hulda Björnsdóttir
My thoughts shared with you 