My husband went to Africa and all I got was a trip to A&E

Scott spent the last week in Gambia where he was Best Man for his friend’s wedding.  I had planned to go but when it became clear it was fast becoming a lads holiday, I decided to bow out.

He survived a week of heavy drinking, sunburn, and petting crocodiles but came back with much more than a tan.

When he returned on Saturday, he told me he wasn’t feeling well and complained of cramping.  I gave my best “there, there” and offered to get him a bowl in case he felt the need to puke.

When he said the cramps were really bad, I resisted telling him he doesn’t know the first thing about cramps. And let’s face it…men can be big babies.

But the cramps didn’t stop and he was really, really sick. Like the kind of sick you can only deal with because it’s your husband and you promised “in sickness and in health” in church. In front of God. And you thank your lucky stars it isn’t you but if it ever is, you hope your husband is so overwhelmed with love and worry he doesn’t mind the vomit. Because no one, and I mean no one, looks good when vomming.

(I imagine this is how it is when you have a child too. Only probably – hopefully – in smaller amounts.)

I knew it was serious when he asked me to take him to A&E (equivalent to the ER) since neither of us ever wants to go to the doctor’s. And it’s free over here! We prefer to self-diagnose and self-medicate.

Going to A&E was my first experience with a NHS hospital (not the doctor’s office). Now, I know you’ve all got opinions on socialized health care. I am a unique case though as I grew up with the military health care system which is similar to the NHS – or at least similar in the aspects I notice like wait times, hospital interiors, and oh yeah, the quality of care.

I’m not going to go into all that because right now we haven’t had any issues with it and we are lucky to have the NHS as well as private health care if Scott and I ever needed to go that route. Right now I am glad that everyone has access to medical care in this country and I’ll leave it at that. Until I decide to have a baby and then I’m sure I’ll rant about something because I haven’t heard good things.

But for now, I’ll just rant about one thing – the parking situation.

Outside A&E, you have to pay to park. I can understand paying. I suppose they don’t want people who aren’t patients taking advantage and parking there whenever they want. But charge us when we leave, when the emergency is over! Don’t make us scramble to find enough coins and run around like a headless chicken looking for the machine so we can Pay & Display while our loved ones are bleeding to death. (There was no blood in our situation but there could have been!)

I told Scott to go in and register while I fumbled with the coins. Of course the machine kept spitting out my coins and I turned around, exasperated, and told the woman waiting behind me that it wasn’t accepting my money. She told me the trick is to put them in slowly.

Hmm. Let me get this straight. I am outside an emergency room. I have just parked in the lot for emergency room patients. You’re telling me there is a trick to operating the ticket machine. You’re telling me I have to move slowly. It’s an emergency for crying out loud!

I finally got the ticket, ran back to the car to display the ticket and ran inside to see Scott.

Yes, all right, fine. Back to Scott. Where were we?

Turns out he had a “serious bacterial infection” (gross) and after his fever came down a bit, the doctor prescribed antibiotics and sent us on our way. We were there for about two hours which I think (and hear) is not so bad for A&E.

He’s feeling a lot better now. Just in time for swine flu to strike.