Pest controller

The dull grey June continues with more drizzle today, and for June it is chilly - it was only 13C early.  The green woodpecker paid a visit to the lawn earlier on and spent some time eating whatever it was that it found - possibly leatherjackets. Less pests in the lawn whatever they were - hurrah!

I'm currently starting the annual catch 22 loop with the local GP surgery over blood pressure meds for my kidney condition.  My specialist Kidney consultant sees me every 6 months to check all is well.  My local GP surgery are just responsible for dolling out the prescriptions for the medication he recommends.  I'm supposed to avoid unnecessary stress, and yet I can't get hold of the pills to deal with the blood pressure without undertaking a process that seems designed to increase it.

I think of it as a game of snakes and ladders.  

It starts when you belatedly find out that you can't renew your prescription.  You don't get any formal notice that the prescription will not be renewed, so hopefully you have a good week or more's supply at this point.  Having slid down that snake, you now need to go up the "make an appointment with a GP" ladder to have the prescription renewed. But getting an appointment is its own problem.

I gave up trying to get through by phone (they only seemed to have one on receptionist on duty today and she was also trying to manage the reception desk). There used to be an on line appointment booking service, but that has recently been discontinued by the practice.  Not that it would have been much help as I need my prescription renewing in a week not sometime next month (which was all the online system ever had available). So I physical had to visit the surgery this morning to speak to someone about an appointment.

But there is a sign on the surgery door forbidding all entry without an  appointment.  Not quite "Beware of the leopard" but I think you know where I am coming from.  So I ignored it and went in to speak to the receptionist.

The end result is that I do now have a telephone appointment with the GP.  

It is sometime in the next week....  

They can't give me any clues as to what day that might actually be, let alone what time of day it might be.  It will however be a "number withheld" call. I'd normally try to avoid answering those for obvious reasons.  Thank goodness I am now retired and not still at work.

From the last time that we went through this little game of snakes and ladders I know that it is only at this point that the practice will realise that they don't actually have any recent blood pressure monitoring results .... and will feel that they can't responsibly renew the prescription without them.  I will point out that I am about to be without medication.  They will generously allow an interim short term renewal provided that further appointments to get my blood pressure checked by a practice nurse are undertaken.  Eventually, in a few months and after various further appointments and a lot of faffing about on my part the prescription will be reissued, just as it has been for the last x years.  

To escape all of those snakes and get on the big long ladder that goes straight to the finish as early as possible I now know that I have to have taken recent home blood pressure readings and have them ready for my first conversation with the GP.  This should then allow the prescription to be renewed for another year without all the visits to the practice nurse or further conversations with the GP.  One year they insisted on my bringing in my home blood pressure machine so that they could check that it was calibrated properly, but we've been through that loop now, so they can't throw that one at me this time.

I have a lot of time for the NHS and its overworked and generally underpaid staff.  But they do seem to inadvertently make the process of getting hold of tablets to treat an existing blood pressure condition more stressful than it needs to be ...

Looking at the above, I come to 2 conclusions (1) I clearly have too much time on my hands and (2) its a quiet news day on the photography front!