Adventures in Health Care (Part 1)
For the past several months I've had some thing growing on my right ear. It had been around for a while, and I wasn't too worried about it, but then I noticed it started growing BIG. So, one afternoon I went out into the neighborhood to take some action on this thing.
I decided to head to one of the neighborhood pharmacies. Over here, you can get anything and everything you want over the counter at a pharmacy. No prescriptions, no doctor's notes, if you want something, just get it. As if that weren't reason enough to head to the pharmacy, there's at least 3 expert medical advisers at every site. Granted, 2 of the 3 experts are 19-year-old guys just out of high school, but they know their medicine. If you ever want to drink some tea and talk about your ailments, just head to the pharmacy. I asked them one day where they get their expertise from, and they just looked at me and said "We read." You can't argue with that.
So anyway, I was heading to the pharmacy when I ran into my apartment manager guy. I told him my problem, and he recommended the neighborhood clinic. Now I've been living in the same place for a year now, and I had never seen the neighborhood clinic about 100 yards from my apartment. He said it was clean (it wasn't overly clean), professional (we'll talk about that later), and free (Yeah, it was completely free). With such a glowing recommendation, how could I not stop by? Thinking I'd get world-class medical treatment and save a few bucks all at once, I headed on down to the clinic...
