Spanish views from a small town

Last Wednesday, I went to refill my blood pressure medication. The pharmacist told me that the prescription had run out, and that I needed to renew it. So, when I came home, I went online and tried to make a phone appointment to renew my medications. But there was no opening until today, Tuesday.  Last night, I got a call from a phone number with so many digits, that it was either the health service, or the bank. It was the local clinic, telling me that my appointment to renew my prescriptions was cancelled, and that it would be rescheduled for the 3rd of August, next Tuesday. The problem? There were no doctors in the afternoon this week.  Excuse me? No doctors? There are no substitutes for doctors who are on a much-needed vacation? Or who are sick themselves and can't come to work? Exactly. There are no subsititute doctors. At the end of July. With tourists teeming all over the place. With the probability of more than one serious accident happening in the afternoon. Oh, but t...

Last evening, I started to feel familiar twinges and decided to go to the clinic to forestall the coming urinary tract infection. I don't have them too often, but they are a big bother when they do appear. It was close to ten thirty when I drove down, the band of clouds to the west and southwest purple and peach against the greenish-blue sky. Where the sun had set, the sky was still a light pink. There were still plenty of people about, some had probably only recently left the beach.  I arrived at the primary care clinic and parked. I hadn't been to the clinic since before Covid. There were four people at the door, all wearing masks. I asked what had happened, and my cousin's wife, who was there with their youngest daughter, said that now we all had to wait outside. The procedure was to ring the bell, someone would come take our information and health card to register us, and then we wait outside. Inside I could see at least four chairs blocked off, to avoid people si...

Our daughter came home on Tuesday evening. From the start, she hadn't been sure whether or not to come, but decided to do so. Only, she tried to stay as far from her father and I as possible, and opted to sleep next door, in the empty house her grandparents had lived in. Her reason for distancing herself was that she had a slight, scratchy throat and a touch of a runny nose. She blamed it on spending the Sunday evening outside without a jacket as the cool of the night was making an appearance. But she couldn't be completely sure. (Did I mention she's a bit OCD?) So, she made a phone appointment yesterday afternoon with her GP, and insisted on getting tested. The doctor told her she would get a message with the appointment, probably for today. An SMS reached my phone yesterday evening. At first, I ignored it. I get so many texts that are simply publicity. But, I looked at it, thinking that it might be from the bank because my daughter wanted to make a transfer. (My phone...

Whenever I have a little health problem, such as a sudden skin eruption, strong cold, slight fever, etc., I don't go to the doctor. Because I would need an appointment. There is never an opening on the same day and by the time there is an opening, I could be dying. To be seen as an emergency case means that unless I'm dying I will probably be waiting four hours before I'm called in, looked at, and given a prescription, all in three minutes. When I notice something start up I do what most people here do, I go to the pharmacy. There, I'll get something for my affliction. Or be told to go wait in the waiting room because the symptoms are troubling. Now, a pharmacy in the U.S. is a walled off and probably glassed off area at the back of a drugstore where you hand in a prescription and after a few minutes the pharmacist hands you a bottle of pills. If you have any health questions the pharmacist will almost always tell you to ask the doctor and he will NEVER give any medic...