Daughter came home from school with a stinking cold. This developed into a temperature overnight so we've all had to stay at home and book a covid test.
However, there are no tests available anywhere in the country.
I then find out that Nottingham hospital offers it's staff and family members testing. So my wife rings up Derby hospital where she works, to ask about this. Derby don't offer it and they said you'll have to go through the website like everyone else.
Now we will all have to stay home for 14 days. My wife will have to cancel 2 weeks worth of patient consultations roughly 80-90 patients will be affected plus telephone calls.
I would have thought all NHS staff would get priority testing. Then I remembered the NHS hates nurses.
Our kids here in Scotland went back to school on 12th August. We have been doing the afternoon pickup to let daughter in law get on with the baby and my son work. By the following Saturday Mrs J, very worryingly, had a temperature just over 40 degrees. We rang 111 and were given a choice of 3 appointment times all around midday at Edinburgh airport testing centre. Wow, great, how very efficient we thought.
About an hour before the appointment I helped a poorly Mrs J into the car and we set off resplendent in our masks. The journey wasn't too bad but there was a lot of following, sometimes not too clear, direction signs around the airport roads. (Amazing how many miles of road there are around the airport!) Eventually we reached the entry gate, just before our assigned time, and joined a crawling queue of cars. After a while we reached a check in gate where we were directed to join another queue. We moved, one or two car lengths at a time, stopping and starting endlessly for the best part of an hour, possibly it was longer. The Lord only knows what this has done for my clutch! We were not allowed to leave the car and had to keep the windows wound up all the time. Having been allocated a specific time when we booked, this whole pantomime surprised us. Also as a chap with a prostate problem I can tell you it's not to be recommended - had to stop at Tesco's on the way home, and not to buy groceries either!
I'm very glad to be able to report that her test came back negative and our Doc thinks she just had a poor reaction to a "school virus" - but it's taken her best part of a fortnight to get back to anywhere near normal. We've noticed all the kids seem to have sniffles and coughs etc - Mrs J thinks it's because the kids haven't been mixing for so long they're now picking up all the illnesses they normally get but all in the one go.
However Paddy, having now read of your experience I count us lucky. I should say that I'm not a particularly political animal but I've been quite impressed with the daily update and question session our Nicola does on BBC Scotland. I've found her guidance pretty clear and easy to follow and much easier to understand than the one Mr Johnson used to give on the national channel. I'm mystified and somewhat annoyed, maybe even angry, that BBC Scotland today announced it would no longer be broadcasting her update daily. Apparently you can "stream" it on line, but the only thing I do with streams is fish, paddle or piddle in them so that's no good to me.
