Our efforts to get hold of the appropriate visa continue. The most recent step was to have a medical. In our innocence we had just presumed this would be a quick chat with the doctor, possibly a blood pressure measurement or two and off we would go, declared healthy with the appropriate boxes ticked. I even thought that we might be able to do this whilst the boys were in nursery, surely they wouldn't want to examine the boys?
How wrong can you be? 6 hours, 6 Doctors, many nurses and quite a lot of cash later we finally got our signed bit of paper.
The following are my top tips for anyone else considering embarking upon the application process (especially those with children).
1. Make sure that you call someone who knows someone who knows someone in the hospital. This can help ease your route through the process and bumps you up to the front of many queues. This also means you must arrive at the hospital (children in tow) at 7.15am before any queues have yet to form in order to be able to jump them.
2. Find a doctor who knows how to take blood. Let him practice first upon an adult to get his eye in and ensure that if anyone is going to have a bruise from bicep to forearm it is an adult. Female doctors are much better at taking blood from wriggling, screaming children.
3. If you give an un potty trained toddler a urine sample pot, it doesn't mean that you will get a urine sample from him. It you write his name on the lid, it doesn't mean he is anymore likely to pee in the pot. Remember, if you can get unpottytrained toddler to pee into the pot, the mother might well kidnap you and take you home until you train the toddler to pee in the potty.
4. Potty trained toddlers are also going to find peeing into a tiny urine sample pot difficult. They aren't going to be able to repeat the attempt to do so either.
5. Neither toddler will stand still long enough to take a chest x-ray without their mother in the room (and even then it is not guaranteed). The toddlers will also take off any special apron thing put around their waists.
6. It is impossible to keep toddlers behaving well for 6 hours. At some point they will leap off the waiting room chairs and run screaming at the top of their voices into a consulting room. They will repeat this several times.
7. They will also crawl under benches, chairs and generally roll around on the floor. They will probably take down giant cardboard displays and use them to build a fort. It doesn't matter how many times you tell their mother that the floor is dirty, they've been there for 6 hours and it is playing on the floor or running screaming into adjacent consulting rooms. You choose.
8. Please don't ask the mother of a toddler if she gets headaches as the toddler is bashing her over the head with a train.
9. Don't ask if she gets enough sleep either. What do you think?
10. At some point the children will have to be fed and given something to drink. This should not mean that they lose their place in the queue.
For me the highlight of the day was when we were given a psychological test. Seriously. It felt like something out of Joseph Heller's Catch 22. If you are applying for a Bosnian visa you must be mad. Therefore we deny you this visa on the basis of insanity.
The quest continues...
Showing posts with label doctors. Show all posts
Showing posts with label doctors. Show all posts
Friday, 3 April 2009
Sunday, 1 February 2009
cough, splutter, hack, hack
Ok, there is one thing worse than looking after sick children when you are sick. It is looking after well children when you are sick. The boys are up and running at full speed. They are bored of the TV, snakes and ladders and making train tracks. They want to do stuff, fun stuff, stuff that involves balls, running, screaming loudly and jumping on each other. I want to crawl back under the duvet and drink Lemsip (or my new discovery Hot Tylenol). Rock on Monday. They are going to nursery to soak up some of that excess energy.
Although we took the boys to the Doctor, both D and I are not that keen on going ourselves. We are a little worried at the casualness at which antibiotics are subscribed. Adam did have a bonafide ear infection for which I can see that antibiotics are necessary but D was given precautionary antibiotics just in case the lurgy got any worse. We have also been taken aback by the lack of instructions regarding the antibiotics. I'm used to knowing exactly how much to take and for how long. Here we've just been given a bottle and told to get on with it. We've enlisted the help of GP friends back in the UK and the internet to make sense of the 5 different types of medicine we now have on our shelves.
Still everyone is on the road to recovery, and not a moment too soon. It doesn't take away from the fact that since we have been in Bosnia we have been remarkably well - only 2 viruses in 6 months. This is a family record which I am delighted about and a considerable improvement to our more usual sickly state in the UK.
Although we took the boys to the Doctor, both D and I are not that keen on going ourselves. We are a little worried at the casualness at which antibiotics are subscribed. Adam did have a bonafide ear infection for which I can see that antibiotics are necessary but D was given precautionary antibiotics just in case the lurgy got any worse. We have also been taken aback by the lack of instructions regarding the antibiotics. I'm used to knowing exactly how much to take and for how long. Here we've just been given a bottle and told to get on with it. We've enlisted the help of GP friends back in the UK and the internet to make sense of the 5 different types of medicine we now have on our shelves.
Still everyone is on the road to recovery, and not a moment too soon. It doesn't take away from the fact that since we have been in Bosnia we have been remarkably well - only 2 viruses in 6 months. This is a family record which I am delighted about and a considerable improvement to our more usual sickly state in the UK.
Thursday, 29 January 2009
Doctors and antibiotics
All good things have to come to an end. Realistically, our run without having to make a trip to the Doctors was never going to last. The boys (and D so it is obviously a male thing) have been laid low with a stonkingly high temperature and hacking cough. Temperatures were responding to Calpol and Calprufen, but they were too high for me to be comfortable with, so I bundled my poorly males up and we made our first proper trip to the doctor that we had found way back in August.
It was a drop in clinic, we didn't have to make an appointment and we were seen in a few minutes. Quite refreshing after the NHS queues and battles. We did have to pay (still a shock to our fairly spoilt NHS coddled systems) but it was only 15KM (about £7.50) per visit.The Doctor smiled at the kids, took their temps, looked in their ears and throats, diagnosed flu and promptly dished out about 5 different forms of antibiotics. We are more used to a fairly robust NHS doctor who only prescribed antibiotics if you were dying and 'most definitely not for flu which is a virus and therefore unaffected by antibiotics' so we were surprised, but when in Rome/Tuzla...
Still they have sorted out the slight ear infection Adam had, the temps seem to be under control and I'm hopeful that life will be back to normal by Monday.
In the meantime the weather is dreadful so I don't feel too guilty about snuggling up with the boys and a couple of good dvds of an afternoon.
It was a drop in clinic, we didn't have to make an appointment and we were seen in a few minutes. Quite refreshing after the NHS queues and battles. We did have to pay (still a shock to our fairly spoilt NHS coddled systems) but it was only 15KM (about £7.50) per visit.The Doctor smiled at the kids, took their temps, looked in their ears and throats, diagnosed flu and promptly dished out about 5 different forms of antibiotics. We are more used to a fairly robust NHS doctor who only prescribed antibiotics if you were dying and 'most definitely not for flu which is a virus and therefore unaffected by antibiotics' so we were surprised, but when in Rome/Tuzla...
Still they have sorted out the slight ear infection Adam had, the temps seem to be under control and I'm hopeful that life will be back to normal by Monday.
In the meantime the weather is dreadful so I don't feel too guilty about snuggling up with the boys and a couple of good dvds of an afternoon.
Tuesday, 26 August 2008
but it's organic!
Luke is not what you would ever describe as slight. Or even slim. He has a stomach that looks as if it has taken 60 years of drinking beer to attain. This is not something I am particularly worried about as he'll trim down as he runs around chasing his brother - already since he started walking there are significantly less rolls of blubber around his legs.
The other day we went to register with an English speaking doctor, actually getting our act into gear to find a doctor before anyone needs one. The surgery was exactly what you would expect from a doctors surgery and the doctor was extremely nice and good with the children. All was boding well.
Lukey had not had any lunch was starting to give out those feed me now before I scream the place down signs. I rummaged around in my bag, located a cereal bar which had been there since we were in the UK and handed it over. Luke sat on the doctors chair, legs straight out in front, stomach doing its best to imitate Buddha's and stuffed his face.
A swift sideways glance later and the Doctor launched into a lecture about needing to feed children fruit and vegetables and to make sure they get a lot of exercise and the inherent dangers of obesity. I was taken aback and mortified. 'But...' I felt like crying 'it's carrot and orange and oats - sweetened only by organic apple juice, no artificial sweeteners or flavourings, it is so good for you it is probably negative calories!'
I haven't been able to find any cereal bars or equivalent here yet. It probably did look like I was stuffing him stupid with chocolate. Looking back, I have a horrible suspicion that the reason I felt so affronted was that if the doctor thought that I was feeding him chocolate he would assume that I was not a good middle class Annabel Karmel type of mummy, a stereotype so English that it is very unlikely the doctor would know it if it waved its organic, lentil stew, steamed vegetable hand in his face.
The other day we went to register with an English speaking doctor, actually getting our act into gear to find a doctor before anyone needs one. The surgery was exactly what you would expect from a doctors surgery and the doctor was extremely nice and good with the children. All was boding well.
Lukey had not had any lunch was starting to give out those feed me now before I scream the place down signs. I rummaged around in my bag, located a cereal bar which had been there since we were in the UK and handed it over. Luke sat on the doctors chair, legs straight out in front, stomach doing its best to imitate Buddha's and stuffed his face.
A swift sideways glance later and the Doctor launched into a lecture about needing to feed children fruit and vegetables and to make sure they get a lot of exercise and the inherent dangers of obesity. I was taken aback and mortified. 'But...' I felt like crying 'it's carrot and orange and oats - sweetened only by organic apple juice, no artificial sweeteners or flavourings, it is so good for you it is probably negative calories!'
I haven't been able to find any cereal bars or equivalent here yet. It probably did look like I was stuffing him stupid with chocolate. Looking back, I have a horrible suspicion that the reason I felt so affronted was that if the doctor thought that I was feeding him chocolate he would assume that I was not a good middle class Annabel Karmel type of mummy, a stereotype so English that it is very unlikely the doctor would know it if it waved its organic, lentil stew, steamed vegetable hand in his face.
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