Jorgensen 6: Norwegian health care

Last night, Sam got some foreign object in his eye. We think it was a crumb. We couldn't see it, but something was definitely irritating Sam's eye. We tried lots of flushing the eye with saline, but no improvement. Poor guy was in a lot of pain. This morning, he went to school, but right after homeroom, he came home and we decided it was time to go to the doctor. This was to be our first experience with the Norwegian health care system, and it was positive.

We showed up at the university health clinic right after lunch. The only information they collected was Sam's age, phone number, and address, and then they made an appointment for that day at 2:15. If we were to be in Norway longer, we would already have a doctor assigned to us, and we would go to that office, but since we are short-termers, we could go anywhere. And it was free. And no paperwork. We pay a good chunk of taxes for this service, so it was nice to be able to use it and have the experience be good.

That gave us time to have lunch in Dave's office. Poor Sam wouldn't even open his eyes. But he still enjoyed his ham and cheese.

The doctor checked out Sam's eye - she couldn't see any foreign object and also didn't see any scratch. To help the eye heal, she prescribe some ointment and to keep the eye covered for the rest of the week.