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"Just because you're paranoid, it doesn't mean that they're NOT out to get you.."

As many members may have noticed, I have a rather jaundiced view of the health service here, especially the public one that the UK S1 entitles you to be a member of; I've has more than enough experience of it over the last 20 years.  At the moment, I'm somewhat housebound waiting to see a vascular specialist: one leg is three times its normal size, very sore, hot, and with bright red, severely stretched skin that's discoloured.  The tentative (and obvious) diagnosis of my GP and his partner is DVT, with an infection to boot (if you'll excuse the expression).  The initial, pretty urgent, treatment is the jolly old rat poison blood thinners and antibiotics. If the clot moves, things can become serious/fatal very quickly. These days, you can't get antibiotics, and many other drugs like blood thinners, with a paper-only prescription, they have to be on the electronic system too; the system works pretty well - until it doesn't!

My GP has given me an electronic prescription, but the system refuses to recognise me (being registered for nearly 10 years doesn't make us friends, it seems),  The pharmacies (my wife's tried several) know what's in the prescription from the paper copy, but the system has no sign of it, and they aren't allowed to dispense these drugs* if the computer says "No"...

The situation was eventually resolved in the time-honoured Bulgarian fashion: my wife had a shouting-match in one of our two local pharmacies and asked the manager what she would do when the TV came to investigate why one of the local foreign residents had died because she wouldn't give him the urgent drugs that his GP had prescribed. I don't know if it was the thought of the TV coverage or losing business to the competition that did the trick 😎

*Yeah, you'right - you certainly CAN buy enough rat poison to kill the whole village across the counter in any hardware store, but not if you want to use it to potentially save someone's life..