Playing the waiting game

I have a simple problem: my left ear is clogged up. I assume it is wax (rather than a small piece of lego or a peanut) but it does now mean that everything I do echoes through my body. Walking back from school I could hear every step resound up into my head as big thuds. When speaking I feel like I am shouting in my own private cathedral, all the sound reverberating in a large, echoey chamber.

This has happened occasionally before. I know what to do: put ear drops in for a few days then go to the nurse and get it syringed.

Being a new patient to the practice (I sent the small rainforest of forms in last Friday) I know I need a 'new patient medical' so I ring the surgery for an appointment, thinking I can kill two birds with one stone.

"I'm a new patient in the practice. Can I arrange an appointment with the nurse for an initial medical?"

"I can fit you in next Wednesday."

Over a week away!

"I'm sorry, but I can't wait that long to have my ear syringed: I can't hear anything on one side." There is a hint of restrained anger. Only a hint, mind.

"I'm afraid you have to make an appointment with a nurse to see if it needs syringing first."

And thus I go quietly mad. Or rather, echoey, head-hurtingly mad. I must now wait for an appointment with someone who will tell me what I already know, and then have to wait for an appointment with her (presumably a further week later) to resolve the problem. Meanwhile I can't hear much except my own ringing ear.

When the NHS works it is brilliant; when it doesn't it is the most frustrating thing in the world.