Sometimes, ya just gotta throw in the towel and see the doc. After transient chills, hot spells, night sweats last night and the pain in my ear spreading to my throat over the last hour on the bus, we opted to find a local doctor in Limerick.<\/p>\n
We didn’t decide right away; we were walking down a street and saw a pharmacy with an attached surgery–a G.P.’s office for the Yanks. Feeling another crawly chill and feeling an ominous tickle in the back of my throat, we decided that I was finally due to visit the doctor. At 11:46, we walked into the pharmacy and inquired about an appointment to see the doctor. The pharmacist pointed down the street and said, “Go down the next lane over, and there’s a surgery at the end.” So, down at the end of thin, dark alley, we found the doctors’ shingle over a small, green door, nothing fancy. At 11:50, we walked in.<\/p>\n
The waiting room was small, with a few people in the chairs. After only taking a moment to consider the situation, since we had no Irish health card, the friendly receptionist handed me a blank sheet of paper and told me to fill out my personal particulars. After turning the sheet back in, I took a seat and began this blog post. I hadn’t even completed the first sentence when the receptionist called me in right at noon.<\/p>\n
“I’m glad to see a tourist, especially an American one,” Dr. Alicia Flynn smiled, shaking my hand. “It’s been a little thin here lately.”<\/p>\n
She worked as we chatted, checking my vital signs as I related my symptoms. After cleaning out my ear with a water pick–ouch–, Dr. Flynn wrote out a prescription for antibiotics and a topical steroid, while incisively quizzing me about my benign lump on my neck. We paid a total of \u20ac50 (US$60) for my visit, and we left the surgery at 12:04.<\/p>\n
We returned to the same pharmacy, “Got you sorted, did she?” asked the pharmacist as she took my Rx slip. A few minutes later, we walked out of the pharmacy with my \u20ac28 antibiotics…at 12:14.<\/p>\n
So, from the time we walked into the pharmacy seeking a clinic to the time we left the same pharmacy with the meds, it was a total of 30 minutes, with just enough paperwork to put me in the system, a visit with a competent medical professional, and a filled prescription, all for less than US$100…and we as foreign nationals with incompatible health insurance. We were very impressed. If we lived here, I’d choose Dr. Flynn in Limerick to be my G.P. I felt that the care was exemplary and first-rate, and we feel that the US has a way to go before we catch up to this level of service at a fair price. Heck…my GP at home *still* hasn’t noticed the lump on my neck.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Sometimes, ya just gotta throw in the towel and see the doc. After transient chills, hot spells, night sweats last night and the pain in my ear spreading to my throat over the last hour on the bus, we opted to find a local doctor in Limerick. We didn’t decide right away; we were walking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,6,10],"tags":[3],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=617"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":618,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/617\/revisions\/618"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=617"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=617"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.someguyinnevada.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=617"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}