{"id":1826,"date":"2008-11-09T19:29:33","date_gmt":"2008-11-09T17:29:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.breigh.com\/wordpress\/?p=1826"},"modified":"2010-05-31T23:45:09","modified_gmt":"2010-05-31T21:45:09","slug":"least-favorite-places-huisartsenpost","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/archives\/1826","title":{"rendered":"Least Favorite Places – Huisartsenpost"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Huisartsenpost\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If I were to make a list of my least favorite places to be here in the Netherlands, it would be here.\u00a0\u00a0 The waiting room at our local huisartsenpost (kind of like outpatients, where you go outside of office hours, only \u2026 different).\u00a0 I took this photo with my mobile while sitting there being miserable this afternoon.<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve been here a few times before like The Night From Hell<\/a>, when I thought I was dying but turned out to just have heartburn and other times but I forget why.\u00a0 Every time we are there I am made more miserable by being there than I was with whatever made me go there in the first place.\u00a0 ugh.<\/p>\n

Today my husband came to me and said he had something to tell me.\u00a0 The look on his face put me into one of those inside panics where it feels like all my organs are trembling \u2013 hate that!\u00a0 I was thinking ok this is it, he\u2019s going to tell me he cheated on me \/ lost a bunch of money \/ is gay \/ wants a divorce \/ <enter other Jerry Springer type of marital surprise here>.\u00a0\u00a0 I tried to remain calm and listened.<\/p>\n

He said he needed me to make an appointment for him at my dentist<\/a> because he has a tooth that has gone bad and broken, and he can\u2019t take the pain anymore.\u00a0 Uhh, wha?!\u00a0 That\u2019s it???<\/p>\n

After the panic and relief subsided I listened to him tell me about how this has been going on for about the last two months but he didn\u2019t tell me about it because he knew I\u2019d make him go to the dentist (he was so right).\u00a0\u00a0 Apparently, the pain has gotten so bad over the past two days that he had no choice but to fess up, even though he is panic attack type of afraid of the dentist.\u00a0 Which I can totally understand after my complete meltdown when I had that tooth removed<\/a> last year.<\/p>\n

A little background on his fear\u2026 years ago, like 9 years ago when I was first living here with him, he had to have a root canal.\u00a0 He was TERRIFIED because of generally bad experiences with dentists here in Holland (this is not a rare occurrence here it seems), so I went with him and oh god it was gross.\u00a0\u00a0 He survived it though and life went on.<\/p>\n

A few years ago he started having pain in that area again and he went to visit the dentist I went to for my first visit years ago, that I hated passionately.\u00a0 I can\u2019t remember how it all went but there between this dude and the root canal there was two teeth removed.\u00a0\u00a0 Then, whatever this dentist did wrong, Xander had to have oral surgery to fix it.<\/p>\n

So a lot of pain and a lot of procedures later, he\u2019s not just afraid of the dentist, he\u2019s terrified.\u00a0 Hence, not telling me about this bad tooth until his head was exploding with pain.<\/p>\n

That brings us to today.\u00a0\u00a0 Since it\u2019s Sunday I had to call our local huisartsenpost and ask if there was anything they could give him to take the edge off until tomorrow.\u00a0\u00a0 Their reply was very helpful.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe don\u2019t deal with teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cI KNOW you are not a dentist but you ARE a doctor and you deal with pain, no?\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, we don\u2019t deal with anything to do with teeth.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cARGH!!!!!\u201d<\/p>\n

I got a number from them for the emergency dentist, which I knew I had no hope in hell of getting Xander to go to but I thought maybe I\u2019d get lucky.\u00a0\u00a0 Yeah, didn\u2019t get lucky.\u00a0\u00a0 The lady who answered the phone was a total bitch and was about as useless as tits on a bull.\u00a0 When I called and explained the problem she said he could get an appointment at 8:30pm (it was probably around 2pm at this point).\u00a0 I asked if the dentist who we\u2019d have the appointment with has experience with nervous patients and does he use anything against pain.<\/p>\n

Her answer?<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know anything about that, do you want the appointment or not?\u201d<\/p>\n

At that point my choices were to rip her a new one or give the phone to Xander and let him try, so I handed over the phone.\u00a0 He had no more luck than I did and decided he\u2019d rather wait till tomorrow than risk going to another hack job like he got stuck with a few years ago.\u00a0 Who can blame him?<\/p>\n

So we went off to the mall to see if they might have something a little stronger at one of the drug stores (the drug stores here are different, mind you, they don\u2019t have a pharmacy in them, so you just get the basics).\u00a0 When we spoke to the lady there she couldn\u2019t believe that they wouldn\u2019t help us at the huisartsenpost and gave us the strongest stuff they had, which she didn\u2019t have a lot of faith in with regard to it helping his problem.<\/p>\n

That got our back up a bit after talking to her.\u00a0 Why the doctors at the huisartsenpost refused to do anything at all.\u00a0 Hell, we pay insurance, and we pay DEARLY for it.\u00a0 If we can\u2019t go and get something to make my husband able to sleep for one night (which he didn\u2019t last night apparently), then wtf, I say \u2013 WTF?!<\/p>\n

We ended up going back and the receptionist tried to blow us off with the \u2018we don\u2019t do teeth\u2019 routine again\u2026 and after explaining we don\u2019t want anything done with the TOOTH he just wants a bit of pain relief, she grudgingly made the appointment.\u00a0 Not before telling us that she didn\u2019t think the doctor would do anything to help us though.<\/p>\n

We saw one doctor first who sat and gave Xander a bit of a \u2018your own fault\u2019 speech because he left it go so long.\u00a0 Yeah, very helpful indeed.\u00a0 I think the pain he\u2019s feeling is reminder enough of what a dumbass move that was, he didn\u2019t need her telling him.\u00a0\u00a0 Finally, I ended up just cutting them off and telling her that he WAS going to go to the dentist tomorrow whether I have to drag him kicking and screaming and would they PLEASE just give him something until then.<\/p>\n

I believe I also mentioned something about if they can\u2019t, can they please give ME something to numb the pain of dealing with him if he doesn\u2019t get something\u2026.<\/p>\n

She left and made us go back to the waiting room again where another doctor would come for us.\u00a0\u00a0 Then we went in and he looked in Xander\u2019s mouth and gave him antibiotics and pain killers, and advice to get to the dentist right away tomorrow.<\/p>\n

THANK YOU JESUS!!\u00a0 It only took us the ENTIRE afternoon.\u00a0\u00a0 Never, in my entire LIFE have I ever seen or heard of anyone having to go through so much bullshit just to get a bit of pain relief.\u00a0\u00a0 In North America you wouldn\u2019t even NEED to see a doctor, you could buy stuff that would be good enough for that just over the counter\u2026 and if you DID contact your doctor, they\u2019d have the prescription written before you even finished explaining the problem.<\/p>\n

Now, don\u2019t get me wrong\u2026 in a lot of cases I think it\u2019s good that the Dutch aren\u2019t so quick to medicate, but good grief!\u00a0\u00a0 I came very close to having one of my famous \u2018This FUCKING COUNTRY\u2019 tantrums today, but I didn\u2019t.\u00a0 Talk about progress!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

If I were to make a list of my least favorite places to be here in the Netherlands, it would be here.\u00a0\u00a0 The waiting room at our local huisartsenpost (kind of like outpatients, where you go outside of office hours, only \u2026 different).\u00a0 I took this photo with my mobile while sitting there being miserable …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,6],"tags":[274,54,144,90,33,57,93,52],"class_list":["post-1826","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","","category-life-in-nl","category-tantrums-rants","tag-dentist","tag-dutch","tag-dutch-doctors","tag-idiots","tag-netherlands","tag-rants","tag-sickness","tag-xander"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1826"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5192,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1826\/revisions\/5192"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1826"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1826"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.canadutch.nl\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1826"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}