The Place to Get Sick

Still really liking Britain's National Health Service. Although I am ready for the time I won't.
I mean, compared to the States, where we've just got nothing.
C'mon, you old tired, lazy Washington politicians. You can do something! Redeem yourselves, please, if you can.
My husband got sick as a dog this past weekend at a friend's house on the south coast of England -- the land of hedges I was telling you about.
Just vomitted and vomitted and vomitted for 12 hours straight basically.
Now, my husband is a bull.
He doesn't get sick.
Unless he gets REALLY sick -- as in life-threatening disease, or emergency operation to remove a body part.
He doesn't just get kinda sick, like you and me.
So, after all that non-stop vomitting, I thought, okay, time to figure out if this is bad.
So my friend and I called the NHS hot line.
We talked to a nurse pretty quickly and explained to her the problem.
No problem whatsoever that we don't live anywhere near there, have no doctor there, or any connection to that part of the world at all really. And there's no mistaking that I'm American.
The nurse didn't like that my husband couldn't stop vomitting. Said that if he didn't stop soon, they'd have to send a doctor over to make sure he did stop, via an injection or something.
Send a doctor over? Boy, did that sound good.
Said the doctor would call in an hour or so.
After just about an hour, a doctor called.
Asked to talk to my husband directly.
That was smart.
Much better to talk to the patient than to the hysterical wife or the concerned friend, right?
Wife and friend always want the doctor to come.
At that point, my husband hadn't vomitted in about an hour and a half.
Doctor zeroed in on that right away.
Talked to him for about five minutes. Asked him exactly what was happening, down to the color of what was happening.
Told him a violent stomach bug was going around, how to wait it out for awhile, what to watch for, when and if to call back.
All turned out to be right.
Pretty impressive show actually.