Tag: United Kingdom

Another Day in London Town and Some Questions About This Health System

Hurt Hand You can get an MRI in 24 hours in London.  Of course it will cost you L250 and is not covered by the National Health Service —  but you can get one.

How do I know this?  I walked into a spa-like place on Drury Lane to find a massage for my husband and there on the reception desk was a brochure announcing the opportunity.  Why?  NOT because National Health doesn't provide MRIs, but because you can wait as long as 6 months to get one.  That's one of the legends of National Health that looks like it 's at least partly true.  Then I had a tiny experience of my own.

A small disaster and quick work.  I was up very late last night talking to a friend in DC -' til 2 AM.  So when I got up this morning I was a little raggedy.  And in the process of slicing bread the knife slipped and I stabbed myself in the left hand.  Bled like anything. There I was, alone in the apartment, bleeding and imagining sliced tendons or non-stop bleeding or God knows what.  

I was impressive though.  Stopped the bleeding with pressure and ice, called our local Boots' pharmacist, who told me to call a walk-in clinic who told me they were NOT insured to apply a butterfly bandage and gave me the name of a doctor far far from here.  Not too reassuring.

I struggled into some clothes and walked to Boots to beg for help, and even though they'd refused on the phone, help me they did.   Looked at the "wound," told me I'd "done all the right things," sold me some special band-aids and anesthetic disinfectant and sent me on my way.  But it' clear nothing is ideal.  The pharmacist says that the services are often "abused" and that we in the US have "the right idea."   I'm going to try to figure out more about National Health "on the ground" while we're here.  It's always different when you're right on top of it.  In the meantime, I seem to be fine; pain diminished, bleeding stopped at least for now. More later.

Report from London: Barack Obama, Man of the Year and Best-Sellwe

LON Man of the Year inside pg.
First-ever Times of London Man of the Year.  This is pretty amazing if you’ve followed the disdain with which the U.S., and particularly George Bush, have been viewed here in Europe. The UK may in many ways be more angry than most, because they were sucked into the Iraq war too. 

But my son, the one who works in London and has been going back and forth for five years or more,reported that the day after the election it felt better to be American in Europe than it had in a long time.  Add that to what happened  when Obama went to Berlin: the amazing reception arising, I believe, because he stands for the America that the rest of the world wants to know.  The America of promise and compassion and justice and hope.

Now the Times of London, one of the great London newspapers, has, in its first Timers Person of the Year – worldwide – chosen President-Elect Barack Obama. In their editorial, they say:

What, then, made Barack Obama’s rise to the presidency so remarkable, such a landmark event, is not the fact of his improbability or of his extraordinary background. What made it landmark is the nature of those things. For unlike his predecessors, Mr Obama’s improbability, Mr Obama's extraordinary background, is not just important to him and to the story of his personal triumph. It caps a period of incredible change in America and makes possible incredible change in the world. And it is this – and the way he won the presidency – that made him the obvious choice as The Times Person of 2008.

London Obama books cropped
Of course the next four years are pretty scary, and it's probably impossible for him to live up to all we hope for him, but at least, for now, we are once again members in good, or at least better, standing, in the world community. 

There's more evidence. These are the best-sellers in Waterston's bookstore in Chiswick. Number one and number four.  This will be a president the world wants to know.  So while it's scary, it's also exciting: to have selected a leader who makes us proud, through a process that made us proud, to have elected an African American president for our country, which, with all its troubles, once again makes us proud too.  The Bush years broke more hearts than our own, and the world reaction to Obama, from the Berlin speech to the London Times to front pages and African murals and Sunday commentary from one end of the world to the other proves it.

We don't know what will come next; we don't know how we will respond to that which is asked of us – and much will be.  But we do know, I think, that we have chosen, as our leader, someone whose place in the world enhances that of our country, and of us, and begins to build the faith, and determination, that will take us where we need to go.