The perils of being young and medicated

Hey, I got pretty worked up over this so I felt I had to take a rage-dump here. (Note: rage-dump being a term of Futurama origin I believe).

For those not in the know, I require a fairly regular prescription. I'm not going to go into details. The usual response I would produce when asked what it's for, I would respond, "anti-depressants" and that usually stops the questions. I'm not actually prescribed them but for the purposes of the curious that is what I "take".

Right, setting-the-story and I've required a prescription for quite some time now, I believe I may have been around 13 when it first started, maybe younger. Anyways, back then my Mother would go to the doctors to hand in a repeat prescription. A few days later it would be ready to be picked up and off to the chemists to be ordered. Most likely, another day as my stuff would have to be ordered in (I'm special like that). Obviously as I got older, I started to take over, fine you're thinking. It was not a problem when I was at school, then college and then University and even my part-time job post University, because I would have time to visit the doctors/chemist to make these droppoffs/collections yada yada ya.

The problem has arisen thanks to myself being in fulltime employment now. This means that the doctors is only open Monday to Friday, and you've guessed it, the opening hours being those that I am at either work, or travelling to/from - i.e. no way I can physically get there on a normal working day. And so the fun begins...

The first nuisance was with having a prescription, it required me to book an appointment with the doctor when it came to registering. And when i finally sorted that out, the doctor didn't have a clue who I was or what I was prescribed. Literally there was a golden opportunity to score some meds, unfortunately I didn't have my fast-thinking head on (I rarely do these days it seems :s). I was also add that the doctor was super helpful explaining how easy it could be to make handing in and then collecting a repeat prescription. I'm not sure I'm into naming and shaming here and the legal ramifications of doing so. Expect a potential edit later.

With that mini-fiasco out of the way, the next step was setting up the collection service. Actually, this part was utterly painless. Thanks alrgely to this dear old lady who understood immediately my situation and sorted myself out no problem. The chemists are open on Saturdays thankfully so it's easy to pop down and pick up the rpescription. I've been given a phone number for the chemist to which I am to ring to authorise them to pick up my prescription.
The next step is what gets my blood boiling.

This is the first time I've used the service, so with any luck it'll be pretty streamlined after time. I've been advised to give the chemist a call to let them know when my prescription will be ready. I posted my repeat prescription through the surgery letterbox this morning and I was hoping to give them a call quickly just to find out when the prescription would be ready to collect. I thought I'd give their prescription number a call. Well guess what? The number is only available between 10am-12am and then 2pm-5pm. I had the pleasure of listening to a recording metion that thanks to demand the line would be only open druign those stated hours, and how I should not leave a message. I was pretty tempted. I'm sure I can't be the only one who would potentially ring during their lunch hour, I mean come on.
Frustrated I headed back to my work desk, noted the more general, appointments number and planned on giving that a call, it would only be a very brief call. I gave that a ring, and that's precisely what it did: ring and ring and ring and ring.
No luck there, clearly noone had the foresight of answering a phone joining the lunch period as people aren't gonna call then? don't be silly!...

Fortunately, I had to pop down the road laterthat afternon, so I could make the calls then, so hopefully that's all taken care of. We shall see come Saturday, when I come to pick up the prescription. It's never smooth sailing is it folks?

Just to reiterate my main point and a reminder of the title of this post, I can't be the only person in this situation, i.e in full-time employment and requiring a (semi-)regular prescription. The truth is how could I be, but it seems like choices have been made which make it very hard to use my local GP. Quite recently, GPs came under pressure thanks to a pay increase but fewer surgery hours, and add to that the fact that callouts have been greatly reduced. There was call to extend these hours and I am in complete favour of that. It doesn't have to be by much, perhaps one day in the week the surgery stays open till 8pm, or there is a Saturday morning surgery. Just something that makes visiting my GP easier. I guess I should be thankful that I don't work on Saturday too, or else I would be pretty much entirely screwed.