Tullamore trip
Trip Start
Mar 29, 2006
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Trip End
Feb 28, 2007
Tullamore, Ireland
Monday, July 10, 2006
The garden is. . .adequate. Not that we cared but it was nice to sit out in the sun and watch the birds. Robins were everywhere. There are also lots, and I mean a multitude of cats around here so I was surprised at the number of small birds still surviving. There was a garden shed and there was grass which I am glad I did not have to mow.
Today we went on a hunt for medical assistance. Anne has decided enough is enough. She had to know what was wrong with her hand which was still painful. We drove to the pharmacy and asked them to direct us to the nearest doctor. Fortunately the medical practice was just around the corner. It was in a modern cottage and we sat in the waiting room for maybe twenty minutes. Anne was called in to see the young doctor. He, as we expected, typed out a referral to the x-ray department at a hospital in Tullamore. That little visit cost us 40 Euros. No reciprocal medical arrangements here. Anne did not mention her little episode with the heart the other day. It seemed to have returned to normal but Anne is being very careful in what she does and what she eats. It gave her quite a scare.
Tullamore was about 40 km away which on the map did not look far but on narrow Irish roads it seemed to take forever. At times, though, there was a speed limit of 100kph which we both thought was ludicrous. No wonder there was a high rate of motor accidents in this country. Tullamore was a big town. We drove straight through the town centre, over the Grand Canal and into the hospital car park. No parking fees!! They were rebuilding the P zone and we could see where they were going to install the 'pay and display' machines but not today.
[There are two ways of approaching car parking fees in the street when you have a rental car. (You have no option in parking stations unless you want to crash through the boom gates). You can feed your Euros into the metre as a good citizen or you could not. In the latter case a ticket may or may not be stuck on your windscreen but precisely where are they going to send the penalty notice other than to the rental company. We did unintentionally incur a 40 euro parking fine in Waterford but I tore it up. I will be curious to see if in six months time it turns up as a debit on my Visa card.]
[ It did!!! Ignore previous note. Bureaucracy catches all in the end]
We found the Accident and Emergency unit and were attended to immediately by the triage nurse but had to wait for the radiologist to call us. In spite of the warning on the wall [Why is it that hospital walls are covered with reams of paper giving scraps of information that no-one takes notice of and just makes the place look uncared for and grubby. Same applies to doctors waiting rooms. It does not give the sick person much confidence in the hospitals hygiene.] that 'waits' might be in excess of four hours for non emergency cases we were called within 30 minutes. The x-ray took all of 5 minutes and the result, which was negative, ie. no broken bones, was back to us in another 20. Anne was relieved although a little dubious. She figured that the x-ray was taken from the wrong angle. We assumed therefore that maybe a metatarsal ligament had been damaged. Anne needed Wayne Rooney's physio. She was told to take lots of Panadol to ease the pain to allow it to heal.
We drove back into Tullamore, parked the car in a station and went on a town browse via the local park and a branch of the canal. Some would say I was lost. Just a diversion. We walked up and down the main streets, decided it was lunch time and found a beaut sandwich shop in an arcade. It was a terrific sandwich with all manner of fillings available. What a difference to southern Europe which is so poor in the variety of foods. [I say 'southern' because when we stayed in Holland we found the variety of food on offer to be some of the best we had ever been proffered.] I ordered mine to be filled with chicken, tomato, cheese and onion and then had it toasted. It was delicious. My cup of coffee was served in a mug...standard in this civilised country. The most amusing thing was that in Ireland they put not only the sugars on the table for you but also small jugs of milk. Something we had not seen since we were kids. Couldn't do it in warmer climes of course. Even so, think flies! Think hours in the sun! Think. . . ! Smell it first Anne.
Back to Banagher and a walk from our cottage into the main street to do some more shopping.
