A Trip to the Doctor

As I have high blood pressure and high cholesterol, I take regular medication and have for years. These are hardly esoteric problems so I knew I could get medication here but also knew it would take me a while to figure it out so I came with a 90-day supply.

The issue got all caught up in my problems getting registered at the beginning since you can't get health insurance until you get the Alien Registration Card, etc. With all of that finally taken care of, I went to the nearest hospital (next town, 45 minutes by bike) to get refills. It's quite organized if a bit impersonal. You take a number, get called, get assigned a number for the doctor and wait. The doc was a nice young woman who spoke very good English. I asked for refills of everything and had brought along the bottles. She had an online "formulary" so that when they didn't have the exact brand, they did have something similar. No problem. That is until we came to the Lipitor.

Any of you that take a "statin" know that they like you to have a blood test at least twice a year to see how your liver is handling the drug. My doctor in Virginia was religious about this and, lo and behold, I found his alter ego in Taiwan. No refill without a blood test and this blood test is after a 12 hour fast. I have to come back another day. I went the morning of the Sports Day since I didn't have a morning class and the test went fine, although realize that I rode 45 minutes in each direction with no coffee -- quite a feat for me!

Had to wait a week for the results then back to the doc but now it was an issue. The clinic hours are 9-12 and 1-4. I am in school at those times. They do have Saturday hours also but I have been going away every weekend, usually leaving on Friday. So I put in for an hour's sick leave from 3-4 figuring I could ride my bike fast enough to get in before 4.

I did but then had to wait ages to see the doctor since the world seemed to be applying for new jobs necessitating having a chest x-ray. Those people don't need numbers apparently and can just stroll in ahead of you and stay one minute and leave but there were about 30 of them. Turned out it didn't matter, I saw the doctor at 4:20 no problem and (shades of the US) my cholesterol level was so low that my insurance company wouldn't allow him to prescribe for me! I have to finish up what I have, wait 3 months to see how it is then maybe they can prescribe if it goes up a lot! Actually, that sounds great to me, I wanted to see what would happen if I took a rest from it for a while.

He gave a month's supply fo the Hbp drugs and refill prescriptions for two additional months. All of this, including doc and blood test cost me about $9.00! Not bad. The only hard part is the getting there during the time frames, especially when the weather isn't conducive to a 45 minute bike ride!