Finally seeing a medical person in person

 Having a medical problem during a time of a pandemic makes it a lot less likely to actually get to see medical professionals. I had been off work for many weeks, and still only spoken to people on the phone. When I had spoken to the local physiotherapist though, he had said that if the exercises he gave me didn't have the desired result, I would have to give a shout and then maybe he could actually see me. And unfortunately, his exercises indeed did not have the desired effect. I phoned the surgery again, and the lady answering the phone said she would ask him to phone me again. Still only a phone call! But what can one do.

When the day came he would phone me, it happened to be my birthday, so I kept a close eye on my phone. It is the kind of day when lots of people might want to phone you. And they did! But somewhere late morning I noticed I had no signal. That has happened before; it tends to mean the entire village has no signal. I checked the village Facebook page and indeed; it looked like both O2 and Vodafone were not working. That was no good! But I had to pop by the surgery anyway; I could just tell them I couldn't be reached.

I thought they would reschedule the call, but what actually happened was that they asked me to sit down while they would ask the physiotherapist to come see me. What? Actually see someone? I didn't expect that! I now wished I had put on a clean shirt that morning. But I was keen anyway.

Soon he called me up. And when I told him the issue was he asked me to make some movements with my arms to figure out where exactly the problem was. He agreed it was a soft tissue injury. And to my surprise, the least comfortable thing he made me do was exert pressure with my middle finger. One generally uses the index finger more! I did not expect that. But it will be useful to know when deciding on mouse settings.

He said that he could only do one of two things; refer me to hospital, or to some government scheme for getting people back to work. And he said the latter thing you could only use once. I suppose I might want to keep that for when I might be self-employed! So I went with the hospital. I know we are in a pandemic, but he said the waiting lists for hospital physiotherapy are surprisingly short these days. He said they would contact me and then I would get six sessions. I hope this will be soon! But I can imagine it won't. I'll have to see! And in the meantime just focus on becoming proficient in using a computer without using my hands. That was going to be terribly important anyway!