How come you are in Germany Swans? I used to work in healthcare/pharmaceuticals and have to say while not perfect the German healthcare system always impressed me. A jab from Boots costs £20 here.
Briefly, sb_73, lucky enough to have married a lovely Bavarian girl many years ago, so when I retired (seems like ages ago!) we decided to stay in Munich. Never regretted it as I love this city, although having been brought-up in London's 'The Borough', I do miss the old 'smoke' at times, and real English sausages, and proper pork pies too!
I can sympathise completely. Totally missed the pasty and a decent banger when living in New Jersey. Though I did find an ‘English’ store in NY where a couple from Cumbria made their own sausages and traditional pasty (used to get them in semi-bulk and freeze them ). Also got the pickled onion monster munch for the memories .
As I mentioned on here a little while ago, I had a CT scan in August as part of the regular surveillance following rectal cancer. Thankfully, it was clear as regards the colon cancer, but the report also looks at all other chest/abdominal/pelvic organs and again it was all gratifyingly positive apart from some minor issues that I will be able to follow up on with my GP - mild thoracic spondylosis, small hiatus hernia, small stones in the gallbladder and mildly enlarged prostate. None of these was considered worthy of action it seems, which is fair enough, but having connected the hiatus hernia to the chronic indigestion I've suffered from for years and mentioned this to the GP, I am now on medication that seems to have cleared up the condition. It strikes me that everyone should be given a scan such as this, maybe every five years or so.
Nice to hear you're fairly healthy. Nice idea - no idea of the costs of a CT scan, but imagine the cost-benefit ratio would be a significant factor in to why this isn't offered, not to mention the additional load on an already struggling NHS...
As for vaccine shots (jabs) here in New Brunswick a couple of weeks ago my partner and I both received the latest Covid variant shot and the senior (much stronger) Flu shot at no cost at our local pharmacy. Now early/late summer we both also received our two Shingles vaccinations here that was $170/shot/person, and noyo not covered, but it is in Ontario, also $22 for the pharmacist to write the prescription and $20/each shot to administer, so da fair chunk of change spent by the pair of us.
Sounds like you’re all protected up, Kilburn. Good for you. Shingles are a real bitch, l had them on my right breast section and l can tell you they tickle.
Right, tiny violin time, but I'm currently suffering from my umpteenth 'man-flu' cold of the winter. As anyone who's had kids knows, a slurp of Calpol can have an under-the-weather child charging round the place again in minutes. Why can't they make an adult version with similarly miraculous properties?
Good luck Stroller with things going forward. I just turned 70, seemingly in good health apart from gaining 50 pounds in the past year (on my way back down now after Christmas season with daily 1 km swimming (40 laps of 25m pool). Perhaps I should ask my 76 yr old GP about a CT scan? New doctor in past year,30 min drive out of town but Wendy and I met him swimming and he agreed to take uson as new patients after we both lost our doctors a couple of years ago 14,000 people on the waiting list for new Dr.'s in a City of just 50,000 people. Our new Dr. did his internship in emergency medicine in the early 1970's in California and worked at a hospital ER in a poor neighbourhood of Los Angeles and he told us that his patients were mostly gunshot wounds and knifings! He has worked at this former small hospital, now govt. medical clinic for 40 yrs and has access to blood/urine testing, a radiologist (M/W/F only) and has access to a full inventory of drugs, e.g. a shot of cortisone steroid on an old tennis elbow type injury of mine. He sees us as a couple too as neither of us is hiding anything! Now he doesn't use a computer, so had no interest in my partner's 228 pages of scanned medical records since 1986 in a pdf file! So definitely "old school" but knows his stuff and has delivered most of the babies in the small village where he currently practices. So we are lucky to both have him, especially for prescription renewals.
. I have a child-donated cold too Stroller. Try Beechams Day and Night Flu relief. The "night" knocks you out and you sleep like a log. The day, dries up the runny nose, and eases the temperature and headache. I'm not running around, but I am getting on with my 70 year old life okay
We also both took the RSV vaccine shot to counter a nasty respiratory virus going around, plus a strep throat that gets into the blood, and if so, kills 10% of people. RSV was $270 each, one shot, good for 3 years, $20 to administer, whereas our 6 Covid shots were all free. We also have both had the senior flu shot, a freebie here (given at same time as our 6th Covid shot last October). So we are both also "healthy as horses", myself a stud stallion, always up for it and my partner a willing fillie! Who needs those blue and yellow pills!
I rarely get colds now, but when I do they are sinus killers. Started one last Saturday, stupidly went to the Huddersfield game, over the worst by Tuesday but it’s still hanging round. So disastrously bad that I didn’t have a drink for six days. Tedious. I have made a in depth study of the OTC treatments available at Boots and the supermarket - Beechams, Sudafed, own brands etc and they are all identical in terms of ingredients and strength , except ‘nighttime’ versions don’t have caffeine. What is not identical is the price, with branded versions 3 to 4 times more expensive. The various different versions of Sudafed - some for sinus, others for congestion etc, all with different packaging are also all 100% identical - but even they are priced differently, so you pay 50p more for something badged ‘max strength’ even though it is the same strength as the other versions. All rely on the consumer looking at the blurb not the contents.
Yeah, it's the sinus thing that's really getting to me at the moment. I can't sleep because I can't breathe. Took a load of Sinutab, which didn't seem to work at all, and have now moved on to Sudafed, which seems to help a bit. As you say though, they're probably all the same anyway. On a separate issue, what do you know of Omeprazole? I was prescribed it for my chronic indigestion and have found it transformational, but have heard bad things about potential side-effects.
Omeprazole is to the best of my knowledge a very highly prescribed drug has been around for years and must be generic so cheap, but also very well studied. Side effects are only important if you actually suffer from them. If you’ve been taking it for some time with no problems, great. Check if it actually treats whatever causes your indigestion or simply masks the symptoms - if the latter it might be good to make sure you are regularly checked over.
I've only been taking it for three months. I think the main concerns are around the effects of long-term use, with a potential link to an increased risk of dementia.
Just had a look at that and immediately found two articles which look kosher which give completely contradictory results. The problem with most studies of dementia is that they focus on elderly people where there is obviously going to be a higher rate of dementia, which takes years to develop to the point where beyond normal cognitive decline is undeniable. Very hard to establish a causal link, you’d have to do huge, decades long studies to do it properly. But if you are worried about it you need to make a call whether the risk is worse than the indigestion. Re the blocked nose, the Sudafed nasal spray (also doubtless cheaper versions available) work for me, at least long enough to get to sleep. But these you definitely don’t want to take more than a couple,of times a day and for 3 or 4 days at most.
Nightnurse and lemsip (or derivitive) always do the trick for me, but I'm not quite as ancient as you old duffers
Last year whilst in Florida for 6 months I discovered that with all the heat & humidity that I truly needed my daily blood pressure medication pills, that I had run out of, along with my Cholesterol (Statins) and Celebrex (wonder stiff joints) prescriptions. To get prescription refills was $70 to get in the door At Urgent Care where a nurse practitioner at least look my BP before writing refill prescriptions for those 3 drugs, but asI was her "new patient" she could only write me prescriptions for one month, rather than the usual 3 months (90 days) in Canada. I'm convinced that she wanted me to return in 30 days for another $70 at UC, but I bitched and complained enough that she added two refills of one month for each drug. At the Public grocery store pharmacy where I went to fill the new prescriptions I was told that my Blue Cross Health/Dental/Travel medical package was recognized in USA to limit prescription prices to $15/drug/3 months (so C$45 for a 3 month supply in Canada). The 30 days of Celebrex was really expensive and as I still had a small supply of older 200mg (yellow) pills I just filled the 30 days of BP and Cholesterol pills and that was US$175! By chance I ran into a pharmacy assistant who used to work at that Publix Pharmacy and I discussed the crazy prescription prices in USA and he told me, "Didn't that Indian pharmacist tell you about the GoodRx website to reduce prices for generic prescription drugs". I confronted the Indian Publix pharmacist about this and he became very embarrassed and told me to get the drug codes off that GoodRx website and give them to him to reduce drug prices Since I was having difficulty with the public wi-fi connection he did this himself and gave me a 3 month supply of those 3 drugs for $65 versus $1075 would you believe? The week before driving to California for a wedding last February I came down with a very nasty rash on the upper part of my legs and buttocks and returned to the Urgent Care facility for another $70 admission and this time I saw the lead Dr. Javed who fixed me up from an apparent swimming pool bacteria infection with a $50 steroid shot, a $50 cortisone shot and 4 prescriptions filled there for $15 apiece ($60), one of which was 2.5% Cortisone Steroid cream. Dr. Javed also wrote me another 3 month prescription for those original 3 drugs, plus gave me a couple more tubes of 2.5% Cortisone Steroid cream, and when that Publix pharmacist saw me coming he immediately grabbed it and quickly filled it for just $65, so I ended up with a 6 month supply of my drugs for US$130 (versus C$90 back home), so pretty good. Dr. Javed even gave a "freebie" UC visit before I left for California to make sure everything was healing up okay, which was very nice of him. All of these medical travel amounts were later reimbursed by Blue Cross on my return to Canada, to the tune of C$1075. So the moral of this story is if you are ever travelling in the USA and require prescription drug refills use the GoodRx website, enter the names (one by one) of your drugs and the name of the pharmacy where you wish to have your Generic prescription drugs filled and you will save a bundle of money!
