The Girl and Boy had fun at the doctor's today, where they went for their obligatory (required by school) medical examination. The Girl revelled in the opportunity to share incriminating information about her brother's various foibles. The Boy got the giggles when the doctor kept 'hammering' him (testing his reflexes). It turns out he is unusually flexible and has potential as a gymnast - well I never.
Medical provision is different over here. You don't just turn up and expect to be seen for free by the nearest GP. The children have to go to a paediatric practice and the Man and I must enroll somewhere else entirely. Apparently we're supposed to draw up a list of potential doctors and then go and interview them for the job of treating us.
We're lucky, of course, because we have medical insurance and therefore have the option to be treated at all. I really don't know what you do if you can't afford insurance or doctors' bills. Get ill and stay ill I suppose. Or worse. Gloomy thought.
TV ads for medical products are a bit different too. The voice-over will extol the virtues of the product (as you'd expect). But then (I guess to avoid litigation) it raps out, machine-gun style, an arm-long list of caveats. There's a commercial like this for a sleeping pill which, quite seriously, ends with the warning: may cause drowsiness...
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