Tuesday Waiting Room, 4 PM

I’ve been here before. It was the unrealised trips to the GP that brought me here, to the UTC, over an hour's walk away from home. The GP instructs you to submit a form online at 8 a.m. and wait for a call from the doctor. The waiting time is uncertain, could be 10 a.m., 12 p.m., or even 4 p.m. You spend the entire day at home, with the anxiety rising through the roof, while your downstairs neighbours loudly change the oven. They once complained about you being noisy when the upstairs neighbours walked loudly in their flat for three hours straight while you tried to concentrate. It's unfair. A council officer wanted to talk to me during the downstairs loudness, and the only lifebuoy lied in this telephone appointment I was waiting for. That was a relief. He didn’t come back on Monday as per his anxious promise. He should check their records because I was the one who complained about the upstairs neighbour first. After months of being stepped upon, woken up at night and pulled away from my inner work. I hoped the situation would improve on its own. My nerves are still frazzled, despite my attempts to be nice and not complain. But it was just too much.

I've been here before and thought I had a spider bite. The nurse gave me a hydrocolloid dressing after two weeks of antibiotics from a GP. My finger hasn't improved, and now all the fingers on my right hand show some swelling, although it's not outwardly apparent. Despite their size and redness, I was told they didn't look swollen.

My skin was itchy after that dressing. In fact, the skin all over my body was itchy, not just around the affected little finger of my right hand. None of the medical professionals I’ve seen ever mentioned that it might be from this damned dressing, even though my hands got worse after close contact with a stranger.

And so, I'm waiting. Advised time is three to four hours. I’m getting used to the digital machine’s clink hapening every minute. Either this or the door opens and unfamiliar names are being called in. Not mine yet.

I have a book I’m reading. “The Other Tenant” by Lesley Kara is quite appropriate for the times I’m living in. Why do people never notice what’s going on in their brain before it is too late? When, for example, anxiety rises in the body, it has already left the brain, and the only ways to stop this are external: breathing, talking, walking, or concentrating. The latter is sometimes the most difficult to achieve. It's in this book. Why doesn't everyone read crime novels to learn psychology?

This place prioritizes quantity over quality. Nurses bring patients to four rooms in turns for a brief chat and either discharge them or send them for further treatment. Patients end up waiting in uncomfortable plastic chairs, sometimes with no chair at all, in a confined space for three to four hours. This sounds like a vestibule of hell.

One thing troubles me. Is the actual healing expected just by sheer waiting? Is that the expectation here? The three to four-hour wait caused pain, numbness, itching, and changes in skin temperature. I feel like nothing more can happen because I've been to the end and back.

Just at the end of the third hour, my name finally flashes on the screen. The paramedic girl has spots and is twice younger than me. I have an impression that she feels that I’m uncomfortable with whatever she’s saying to me, so she’s kind enough to ask another older nurse for a second opinion. I am given proper names of the creams to purchase at the pharmacy, but everywhere is closed now. Damn all this waiting!

I have dermatitis, diagnosed by a doctor last Friday. She, too, missed the swelling, but tried to offer mental health help instead. Wouldn't it be better for my mental health to let me know the name of the condition I have and suggest treatment, rather than just typing it into the system? I wouldn't have to hide from completely falling apart in response to her barrage of inappropriate questions.

It wasn’t a pinkie day.

---

Thank you for reading!