My dad first had it in his twenties. So far I’ve been lucky, I’ve only had “the point” and in a single buttcheek and it’s never lasted more than one day and it’s only happened a couple of times but yeah, it’s amazing how something so little can hurt so bad - it feels like if you so much as think, it will manage to hurt even harder.
Went to the health center nearest my house yesterday, to see about getting a GP appointment in order to get a referral for an allergologist. Was told that since I appear in the Puter, I have evidently been to the doctor in Andalusia before. Told them I haven’t, and since the address was the current one they must have gotten it as a data exchange from Navarra. Was told I must’a been to the doctor in Andalusia but “must be you don’t remember” (sure, I must’a passed out from the booze and drugs, sigh). Turns out (this procedure changes by Autonomous Region) that I needed to get one assigned as “transient” first, fill this document but you have to bring it in the morning. I asked to verify that it was the right center, was told it was.
This morning it turned out not to be the right center, go to this other one (was told again that I evidently have been to the doctor in Andalusia before). I was able to find thisotherone pretty easy, yay me. Then they told me I was missing “proof of address”. What can I say, I’m used to a guvmint which believes you live someplace if you say you live there and which is even happy to keep three separate adresses (permanent, temporary and one to send mail), so I hadn’t thought of that. Went back to the house to get my rental agreement, all the while wondering what would happen if a visitor or someone who’s in a shared flat or somesuch happened to be the transient. Went back to thisotherone health center. The lady asked whether I’d been to the doctor in Andalusia before: I said “no, but I do show up in the Puter” “aha, that’s what I wanted to know, good!” This one did not insist that I have been to the doctor in Andalusia before, which was nice of her. But ah! Le horror! Da scare! Terror infinitus, panic in the classroom, household appliances are rebelling!
The Puter said I was “passive”, that is, not paying SS. Now, I’ve been self-employed (that is, paying my whole “SS contribution” by myself) since January 2008, and every month I have to send “proof of SS payment” along with my bill or else I won’t get paid, so I’m reasonably sure that I am very much “active”. You have to go to SS Treasury, she says, and ask them for proof that you’re “active” so we can fax this to Central and have it fixed, we can’t change that field; thankfully SST happened to be in the same building. She also gave me my GP appointment: there were 3 GPs available, I picked the one which works 4 afternoons and got an appointment for Monday (it’s no surprise that the Andalusian Health Service is overloaded compared with others, but back home or in Catalonia I would have been surprised to get a GP appt later than the day after).
Went to SST. The lady at SST said that yeah, since healthcare has gone from single-payer to seventeen-payers and so many of them insist in not having their Puters talk to the other Puters, it’s a PITA, the “transients” always have this problem with appearing as passive (because we pay SS in another region, even though we pay it to SST, which then hands it over to each region - “bureaucracy” is a four letter word, isn’t it?). She gave me the cert that I’m active, but we saw that it didn’t print my name correctly: it was treating the two first words in my first lastname as “first lastname” and “second lastname”, oopsies - so she gave me a screenie as well to show that it was a problem with the printing program, I truly am me and not someone with a similar name and the wonderful second lastname “From”.
My feet hurt (bleeping bumpy sidewalks may be good for wheelchairs and trolleys but are hard on thin soles) and at one point during the bureaucratic gymkhana I’d felt like I was beyond the edge of a nervous breakdown, but I figured I’d come in to work anyway cos I wanna get paid damnit, so I did come in.
Now let’s hope that on Monday I actually show up as “active” in the doctor’s Puter, because the appointment is at 7pm and SST doesn’t work at those ungodly hours 
I did not drink any of it. I got informed that OYKW and I would not need to bring beer or drink green beer cause we were bein’ taken care of and we were with plenty of ice cold Miller Lite. Bless our gracious host.
