Had I been in England I am fairly sure that I'd have spent an hour on the phone, making enquiries, being put on hold and eventually, possibly after making a second phone call to a different number, booking an appointment with someone who could stab me viciously with enough needles to make me invulnerable to all the different sorts of nasties that are abundant in Bangladesh. Well, maybe not; who knows? Then it would have been a simple matter of turning up and enduring the Pain Of A Thousand Needles.
Here, in Portugal, I was not so sure of the routine, and so I made a few enquiries. The Nurse at my place of work gave me the advice that I needed to send an email to a special clinic in Lisbon to arrange an appointment to get the vaccinations done. My wife's Nurse at her workplace gave differing advice; to book an appointment with the travelling work doctor to get the prescriptions filled out and then pop into the "drop in clinic" in Oeiras to get the vaccinations done. Given the choices, the chance to speak in English to a doctor and then use the drop in centre was a clear winner. So my wife booked an appointment.
The Doctor clearly explained the routine to us. The Hepatitus A and B medicines would need to be bought, using the appropriate prescription, from a pharmacist's shop in advance of visiting the drop in centre. No problem, or so it would seem. Except when we tried to buy the vaccines, the pharmacist explained that she hadn't got enough in stock for all five of us. Ah well, we took what we could get, which was two adult doses and one children's dose, and decided to head to Oeiras anyway.
Upon arrival at Oeiras, we were greeted by a most helpful guard, who on hearing us talking in English about which option to select at the ticket dispensing machine, asked if he could help us. After explaining what we were there to do, he led us swiftly straight through to the desk (for some reason bypassing the multitudinous people waiting patiently for their own numbers to come up on the plasma screen) to be dealt with right away. More luck! The lady sitting at the desk also spoke very good English! (Or did the guard know, and that's why he rushed us through?) It was probably just as well that the lady spoke English, because four hours later, after much form filling, passport checking and even more form filling, we were eventually led two at a time through to the doctor's room, for our jabs. The adults were brave. The children cried. The paperwork got a bit mixed up again. However, it was not long before we left the clinic with plasters on our arms and paperwork to prove it had all indeed happened. Oh, all except from the Japanese Encephalitis jabs, which we found out that we should have bought from the Farmácia in advance along with the Hep ones. Ah well.
Round Three. Ding Ding... Phew. This is tiring. It was a Tuesday and I'd already been to the Farmacia in advance, two days before, and bought the Japanese Encephalitis drugs (which were blooming expensive!) and so we were at this point most definitely winning. Off we trotted to CUF once again. We were getting used to this now, and since we were already present on their computer system, it was only 30 minutes later that the jabs were done, the paperwork done and the payment, which was less than before, all done. Knockout!
Of course the Second Bout is coming up, when we have to all get the "second dose" of all the drugs that we've already had, enduring once again the pain, cost and children's tears all over again.
