I had a fairly unusual experience over the last few weeks.

I got a sinus infection that would just not go away. There was nothing unusual about this. I get these kind of often. But out on tour, the schedule is a little crazy and it takes a while to be sure it’s a sinus infection and not just a never ending cold.

So during the November layoff, I finally went to the walk in clinic after having this cold/sinus infection for about two months.

He pretty much called me a fool for waiting so long and prescribed me some drugs and life got better.

I waited like an hour total between time sitting in the waiting room and the actual visit.

I pay $140 a month in health insurance fees. I have a pretty high deductible to meet for that amount.

And despite the health insurance I pay, there’s the fact that it’s a literal roulette wheel spin on how much that doctor’s visit was going to cost me. They take my credit card number down because they have to send the bill first to the insurance company to see what portion they’ll pay (even the doctor doesn’t know).

Five weeks later, I got an email saying my portion of the bill will be $49.50.

I always brace myself for maybe $200? Maybe more? Who the heck ever knows? So about $50 was a-ok with me.

I then went to get my prescriptions filled and it was about $30 for the Flonase and $45 for the antibiotics.

So all told, my sinus infection cost about $125.

As the doctor had pointed out to me, it was a fairly raging infection and he said that one dose of antibiotics usually clears it up, but I might need a second.

The antibiotic treatment lasted 10 days and, surprise, surprise, I was already headed back to London, but I did feel a lot better.

A week and two more flights later, I was not better.

And so, I got to experience the UK NHS treatment of the same malady.

I went to a walk-in centre on our dark day and waited four hours to see the nurse. Fortunately, I’d gotten fairly addicted to Gavin & Stacey and whiled away the time watching it on Netflix on my phone.

They don’t like to prescribe antibiotics much in the UK, so I got a little lecture about the dangers of taking too many and building up a resistance and then the nurse consulted some book and prescribed me steroids for my sinus infection instead.

The visit didn’t cost me anything because even though I told them I didn’t have an NHS number, apparently the one I had as a student here lasts forever and they pulled it up just by entering name and confirming my old address.

The steroids cost £9.

Not super efficient, but cheap.

However, the steroids made my nose bleed and I had to go back to the walk-in centre once more.

After a mere two hour wait, I was finally prescribed some antibiotics. I’m very allergic to penicillin, so the nurse prescribed the next thing on the list of treatments, doxycillin or cyclin or whatever, which made me super sick to my stomach when I took it later that night.

However, the cost was again only £9.

So, assuming I actually lived here again and had a normal doctor, I guess I would know which British antibiotics I can actually take to not get really ill and actually get better.

I would say everything that stacked up against the British experience was time and number of visits required to get what I actually needed… which never even happened because I wound up back in the U.S. before I could resolve the problem and after the antibiotics making me so sick, I decided to just wait and go back to my walk-in clinic and take the American antibiotics that I know won’t make me ill.

But man, is it cheap.