English Lesson #4: It Has To Get Worse Before It Can Get Better

“Clark, it’s over...I think it’s best if everyone just goes home, before things get any worse.”
-Ellen Griswold (Beverly D’Angelo), National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation

I know the feeling. Lately I’m a man on the edge myself. Things were looking up with our trek two weekends ago to Portchester castle, but they’ve been going downhill ever since—not just the bunny slope either, this is like the Olympic luge or speed skating. And to top things off, now the dishwasher doesn’t work. I needed that like I needed a bloody hole in my head. At least we already know where the hospitals are. I’m getting ahead of myself though, so let me start at the beginning, there’s a few things I haven’t been telling you.

Sunday, July 8^th, 2007, a seemingly normal post-Fourth of July Sunday afternoon. I was in the garage making sure the sprinklers were all set for our three month hiatus. I was about an hour away from discovering the construction workers at the house next door severed one of my pipes in two places. Naturally this discovery would be made literally hours before I was to depart the country. Jen came out of the house into the garage in tears and blurted out “I’m pregnant”. With one hand still on the timer dial, I turned around, said “no you’re not”, and went back to programming zone four. She squealed out “that went well” between sniffles and headed back into the house. So that’s how this trip really started. I’m still not sure why she was crying.

The certified smart people estimate she was already about four weeks pregnant when I was reprogramming the sprinklers. Amazingly enough, those first four weeks passed without incident, but as soon as she knew she was pregnant chemistry kicked in and she’s been sick as a dog ever since. The weekend we moved into the apartment things kicked up a notch and Jen went from Saturday night until Tuesday morning without keeping anything down. She was dehydrated, hallucinating, and going into shock. By the time we got to the emergency room at Queen Alexandra hospital she was seeing things crawling on the ceiling.

The first doctor to see us couldn’t have been more than twelve. She looked Indian and was very soft spoken. She read through the symptoms on the chart and without even really looking at Jen, she asked us if we knew that “morning sickness” was a part of early pregnancy. Next please. This time we’d like someone who didn’t just read about pregnancy in a book, in fact, someone actually old enough to have a baby would be nice. Enter Ewan: early to mid-forties, good bedside manner, actually looked at Jen and assessed her condition before speaking. Our assessment of socialized medicine was improving.

Because we are visitors to the UK and Jen was not “registered” with a GP here, Ewan was slightly puzzled as to what to do. Additionally, being an ER doctor, he was not too sure which drugs would be safe to give a pregnant woman. He told us he needed to “go for a think”. When he came back he had a plan: cyclozine intravenously for the nausea followed by a bag of fluid for the dehydration and then “you should be feeling a bit more human again”. The nurse came to put in the IV and, in her words, “blew the vein”. Medically we weren’t too sure what that meant, but physically it hurt like hell and our estimation of socialized medicine went back down a few pegs.

The nurse had to use a child’s needle and, having blown the vein in the arm, went for the wrist instead. Unfortunately that meant the bag would take about eight hours to empty, and they wouldn’t let us leave until Jen finished the whole thing and could hold down some food without throwing up. We arrived at the hospital about 4:30AM and, finally, about three in the afternoon, they were ready to discharge us. Jen was never formally admitted to the hospital, just held for observation. One of the nurses gave us a prescription for cyclozine tablets and asked us if we usually pay for prescriptions. I laughed. Since 4:30 in the morning I had nothing to do but sit next to Jen and assign dollar values to all the things they had done to her since we arrived. “I’m sure we’ll have to pay” I told the nurse, a jolly Irishman who had been giving us advice on things to see and do. He gave us directions to the pharmacy and sent us on our way, which prompted Jen to ask “what about the visit”?

The Irishman, completely serious, returned “where are you going?”

God love him, they’re so helpful here.

“No”, I said, “what about the bill for the emergency room treatment”?

“It’s free”, he said, a little confused.

“But we’re not UK citizens”, I shot back, reaching for my wallet.

He explained that it didn’t matter. His hard earned tax dollars paid for not only his health care, but emergency health care for ham shanks like us on holiday. It happens all the time he said.

“Let’s go dear”, I told Jen and we shagged ass out of there, waving good bye. Off to the pharmacy, I’m sure they’ll catch up with us there. Back home even with insurance they stick you at the pharmacy. Six pounds and eighty-six pence, or roughly $13 for a three day supply of cyclozine. It almost cost me more to park the car for 12 hours. Maybe Hillary’s onto something, this socialized medicine thing wasn’t looking half bad.