Health service thumbs up

Dear Editor
I felt I should write as I am so aware of all the negative publicity about the Portuguese health service, and yet we had a very positive experience this week – something that has made us both take all the bad news with a huge pinch of salt.
My husband has recently been diagnosed with a form of heart arrhythmia and put on a cocktail of medication. Looking it all up on the internet (something I have since learnt is not the thing to do), the medication looked loaded with worrying side-effects. I felt we had to go back to the doctor and ask questions.
Were we faced with an overloaded waiting room? Not at all! We walked into the state-run clinic, were whisked through almost immediately to the doctor who gave us a huge chunk of his time to explain everything in words of one syllable.
He even tried his English on us, as our Portuguese is very basic. The bottom line was that we went home much more relieved and realised that we shouldn’t believe everything we read, either on the internet or in the newspapers!
Ivy Plunkett
Odemira