Medicals - Tuesday 18th December 07

Tuesday we had our medicals to ensure we are fit and healthy enough and will not be a drain on the economy when we arrive in Australia. What a nightmare of a day it was !!

Local traffic was appalling as a DHL money delivery van had been robbed and shots had been fired!, we couldn’t get onto the M62 motorway due to the queues which were as a result of a crash (someone died) luckily Jason knows lots of back roads, but of course they take longer than the motorway, we eventually joined the A64 road into York and were doing Ok until about 15 miles from York when we stopped and did not move for nearly an hour, now York is about 1 hour from home, we left at 8 in the morning and our x rays were at 10.30, so you would have thought that we'd have enough time, but NO.

We eventually got off the A64 and went through all the pretty villages round York and got to our x-rays 40 minutes late. Now while we were sat waiting I was thinking about the medicals, which were at a Doctors surgery at 1.40 that afternoon and had an awful thought, I knew that they did an eye test and asked Tom if he had brought his glasses, he hadn’t.

When we got out from the x rays at 12 ish, Jason rang the Doctors and asked if we really needed the 16 year olds glasses to be told by the receptionist we did. So we dashed into York to Vision Express, luckily got Tom in for an eye test and we bought new glasses for him which would take 1 hour to be ready. So the plan was for Jason to take the children and I to the Doctors who could start the kids meds and he would go back and pick up the glasses. When we got to the Doctors (15 minutes late) and explained what we were doing the Doctor was lovely and asked Tom to go with him straight away for a test, he then said that he was Ok and would pass the medical without the glasses so we could just collect them on our way home.

Vision Express were fantastic, very helpful when we explained the situation, although we were a little rude at the end when the manager tried to sell us Insurance, he was asked if we would be covered in Melbourne from March, strangely enough we wouldn't be.

Anyhow it then took hours to get home, there was a convoy of large things on the back of HUGE lorries which we followed on the M62 home, we were one of the last cars off before they closed that motorway. We stopped at a pub at about 6.15 for some tea and an alcoholic drink which we needed.

So the meds are now over with , they are physically not painful, but mentally they were excruciating and we were far from stress free, good job they did not need to take either Jason or my blood pressure or we would have failed.