Boring stuff

I can no longer use jet lag or my lack of acclimation to the water, altitude, driving, etc. as an excuse. I am not on holiday; I am living here now so I need to establish a "life" for us. I have to get to the boring part of immigration, not that packing and unpacking were all that interesting! I have to find some doctors, a dentist and establish a relationship with a vet for the dogs. So it's time to start another list!

1. Vet - This is easy. Everyone seems to have a dog or a cat in my little townhouse complex. And they all go to nearby Parkmore Veterinary Clinic. So I will too! The husband and wife vet team are very friendly and lovely, they have a fully stocked shop for food and supplies so I do not have to go to the expensive chi chi pet store at the Morningside Mall. Eukanuba specialty dachshund food, greenies, and frontline. They have it all. Plus they will board small dogs which is good to know if Isabelle our dog sitter is unavailable. Check!

2. Doctors - At a minimum we will need an Internist, a Gynecologist and a Radiologist for my mammograms for me. May need other specialists in the future but I will cross that bridge when I come to it. (This may take a second list.)

Also a good Travel MD. We had one in Morristown for the myriad of shots we needed to get before emigrating - Yellow Fever, Tetanus, Typhus, Typhoid, Smallpox, Whooping cough, Hepatitis AB and Rabies, and for our initial Malaria prescription. (A step up from my first safari to Kenya and Tanzania in 1979. For those vaccinations I had to wait on line at the creepy federal Department of Health on Varick Street in lower Manhattan.) We can probably do all that with a general practitioner but the travel specialists stay very current and that is important I think in this part of the world. Vince already found one here in Morningside, the Netcare Travel Clinic, when he had to get the third of his series of Hepatitis AB vaccinations before I arrived so we are good there. One check, with a few more to go!

3. Dentist - This is going to be difficult! I loved my Dentists in NJ. Part Dentist, part Psychiatrist, they were patient and kind and they put up with my beastly brattiness. In other words, they gave me as many drugs as I requested. Novacane, gas, probably would have given me morphine just to shut me up!  I HATE going to the dentist. HATE HATE HATE. I went to a Dentist for a while who was also a good friend of mine who will remain nameless. I had to stop going to him because I couldn't be my bitchy self one day in his examination chair and then have a cocktail with him at a party the next night knowing he was judging me. And I couldn't realistically contain myself in his office for very long either. Eventually I would release the kraken and start screaming like a two year old when the teeth cleaning hurt! Thank goodness I did not have that problem with doctors too. I was good friends first with my Dermatologist, my Ophthalmologist, and even my (gulp) Urologist before becoming their patient back in NJ! I am actually a pretty good doctor patient. But dentist patient? Might be a while before I can check this one off!

I do have recommendations for both a general practitioner and a dentist from some expats who work with Vince so I will start there. This is going to be a trial and error kind of thing. Boring for sure but at least with the luxury of time. For now.