sunshine and sickness

Well, this week came to a bit of an unexpected conclusion - Sydney had its hottest May weather for 15 years and I ended up in a medical centre.

The two are un-related. For a while I had been suffering from intermittent headaches, drowsiness and ear ache. Being the sensible 21st century man that I am, my response was to ignore it and hope it went away. Generally it did. But last week I noticed that I was feeling excessively tired and drowsy, and yet I only went out once. It did start to occur to me that, on this occasion, it wasn't self inflicted.

Anyway, on Thursday temperatures soared to 27 - very warm considering winter is only a few weeks away. I made my way to work thinking I could spend lunch in the botanical gardens overlooking the harbour.

Unfortunately I spent lunch time with a doctor, after the pains returned mid morning, I started feeling dizzy and nearly fell over. After a quick once over, I was diagnosed with an ear infection and sent on my way home with prescriptions for pain killers and anti-biotics.

In a way it came as something of a bizarre relief. There was literally less than an hour between me feeling fine in the office to me going home in a taxi and having seen a doctor and a chemist. I felt like shit, but at least I knew what had been making me feel ill and I could now get better.

My experience of the Australian health system was very brief, so I'm not really in a position to make an objective statement about it. All I will say is that I walked into a modern, clean and friendly medical centre that had no screaming kids bashing around those fucking annoying toys you find in British GP surgeries, there were no two year old copies of Good Housekeeping magazine covered in snot laying around, I didn't have to fill any forms in and a doctor saw me immediately.

Like I said, I'm not in a position to form a balanced opinion or compare it to home. So I won't.

Being ill has deprived me of the chance to enjoy Sydney in this weather, which is a shame. I may never see another really warm day in this city again. Oh and because I'm poorly and on prescription drugs, I've imposed a strict No Alcohol policy. So far, it's going well. Watch this space....