Health and Happiness

Had a great night at Swedish language school last night. We had been given an assignment to find a newspaper article during the week, and then to present the article to another group of students for discussion. Now, being from a small town, there's not a lot of newsworthy happenings. So our local paper is usually padded out with stories of the weird and wonderful. Which suited me just fine for this exercise. Anyway, bottom line was that 7 of us sat around for an hour, discussing the news, and life in general. There we were, Lebanese, Polish, Estonian, Chinese, Kiwi, Vietnamese, and French. A veritable gathering of the United Nations ended up having a right royal bitch session about the shortcomings of the state run pharmacutical outlet, Apoteket. For anyone not familiar with the Swedish healthcare system, prescription pharmacies, all called Apoteket, are government owned and operated. Swedes are a bit paranoid when it comes to drugs, so pretty much anything stronger than an asprin requires a trip to the doctor (läkare), and a prescription (recept). There's the odd private doctor around the place, but, for the most part, doctors are employed by the state. They mostly work out of communal medical centres, known as vårdcentral. Which centre you go to is usually determined by your post code, but they are about to loosen up on that a bit so that you can pretty much go where you want. On a bizarre side note, Apoteket is also the outlet for all animal medicine. Feels a bit odd asking the chemist for laxatives for my cat. They look at you like "sure, for the cat. We believe you. You sicko". One thing they have done well, is their electronic system. Once the doctor (or vet) has typed your prescription into the computer, you can pick it up from any Apoteket in the country. No clumsy pieces of paper. Just flash your ID, and the drugs flow like water. If they have the drugs, that is. I've lost count of the number of times that my prescribed medication has been "out of stock". But the theory's good. So that was our evening. Seven of us from the far flung corners, stumbling around with our Swedish. I really enjoy those nights. They are good, intelligent people. There's no pretence at hierarchy. We're all bollocks, and we know it. And that's kind of a nice feeling. Knowing that when you strip away any home country advantage or status, and make life a true level playing field, that we are, all of us, just the same. There's no race, religion, or cultural distractions. It's a very unique experience, quite surreal. And definitely the highlight of my experiences so far.