misskatpaw

Hi

We did our medicals y'day, so thought it might be helpful to write a little report for others who will be going through this and also to get some feedback for us, from others who've done them!

We went to Manchester's New Collegiate Medical Centre, which was basically like any other doctors surgery you might go to. Got there an hour early to make sure we knew where it was etc. we decided to go for lunch beforehand as we were pretty hungry but I was nervous and in hindsight I wished I hadn't eaten before as I felt a bit sicky but looking at how long it all took, I'm glad I did or I'd have been fainting with hunger!

Our appt was at 1.30pm, both Marc & I were called through at the same time by same-gender Doc's. I found my woman doctor to be a bit formal, for the most part. I was asked to sit down & the quickfire round of med questions begun, whilst taking my blood pressure..."Have you ever had a stay in hospital, ever had an operation (back to childhood), have you ever had TB, have you lived in a house with someone with TB during the last 2yrs, ever been diagnosed with HIV, every had stomach or bowel problems, do your parents or siblings have Xxx (can't remember but didn't mention heart probs as thats the only one I could've said yes to). Then...how much do you drink on average a week and then specifically.."if you went to a party, how much would you drink in one night"!! I am of course a light drinker who doesn't binge drink

Anyway there were more Q's than that but I can't remember them all... I answered No to everything (I genuinely haven't ever had a stay in hosp in my 32yrs, or had an op) and Doc said, "that's unusual for someone living in the UK" and I thought, does she think I'm telling porkie-pies? I was careful not to try make things fit though, thinking that if I didn't say yes to something she'd think something wasn't right. Although I did try with" I have a bit of a wheat intolerance which sometimes gives me stomach/bowel problems", which she dismissed.

So, my blood pressure which has always been ok, was particularly high (wonder why?!) The machine kept beeping funny and I was obviously failing it. Doc asked if it was normally ok and I said yes. She tried a 3rd time and then said, "hmm, still a bit too high for my forms, we'll try again at the end"

Then, I thought Doctor Ice Queen had melted & was being chatty when she started asking, where do you want to live in Canada, what job do you do now, what are you going to do over there. So I started gabbing like I've done a thousand times before with friends and colleagues who've asked the same thing, until I realised she wanted one word answers for the form! When I said was a Police Officer, she mellowed and said I shouldn't be nervous with her and doing this, as she's always terrified when she sees Police Officers, wondering what she's done wrong, etc. I though that was amusing & I guess I relaxed a bit.

Then she listened to my heart and breathing. As I'm a girl, she did a 'you know what' examination, looked in my ears, looked into my eyes, nope not lovingly but with a torch. Then was asked to read from an eye chart. Then asked to remove shoes, socks and jeans and lay on the bed for an examination. She looked at & felt my feet and then did an abdominal exam. I asked what she was looking for doing that and while she was answering, I was overcome with laughing to myself, thinking, the only thing you'll find is the pointy corner of a Pizza Hut pizza slice! As I had started laughing, I thought I'd better say it out loud, she smiled, but that was it. AWKWARD! But it amused me

Then back to blood pressure, I passed on the 5th and final time and she actually let out a big sigh of relief and gave me a big smile and a thumbs up ! Next was taking blood and then, I was given a pot to do a tinkle in. She said that they are supposed to watch you doing it, but I was allowed to go into the toilet and close the door. Thanks Doc. Guess who couldn't manage a drop? She said its ok, but suggested I drink a load of water and wait in reception before trying again. Had to sign my life away on a load of documents and go wait in reception. About 25 mins all in all.

Marc came out a minute later. Said his male doc had been fine. Two things that the doc had made notes on with Marc though was, an op he had 10yrs ago on a Urethral stone. He had to get the little fella (sorry dear, the mahoosive fella) out to show the scar and the doc asked him some questions re; the procedure which he couldn't answer. So he made notes and said, "fine since". He also detected Cholesterol deposits in Marc's eyes (common way to detect and something Marc was aware of from an optician finding the same), so the doc noted this. At the end he said, they might want to know more about these two things, so suggested we pre-empt this and look into them.
When Marc told me this, I immediately felt deflated and thought, oh no problems problems problems. Aaaaaarrrgghhhh!
I managed to tinkle in the bottle, went back in and Doc Ice Queen dipped it with her dipping stick and said it was fine. We then went back to reception and paid for the meds on debit card. I asked to look at our papers that the docs had filled in. This was because I knew the CIC doc with your picture on has 4 categories to tick, A, B, C and D. from what I had read, 'A' was the best one, basically 'no-ones perfect and you might need to go to the doctors occasionally for XYZ", through to C being you have something really wrong with you and need high levels of care and 'D' being something difficult to classify. I saw that we had been both ticked as 'A' which was good. So although the doctors notes are attached to the form, we have both been classed as 'A'.

Then the doc surgery called us a taxi to take us to the hospital for X-rays. (20 min wait!) A short distance but longer in time due to traffic. Told to go to X-ray A Dept, then told no, it's now X-ray B, then told, no you have to pay first, so sent back to finance department to pay, then back to X-ray B with a debit card authorisation code to prove we'd paid. The X-ray was fast and smooth and everyone was friendly and chatty. We had a laugh at each other in the stoopid gowns. Felt better and not as deflated then. That was until the taxi took 40 mins and 4 phonecalls later to collect us. This meant that we got back to our car, just in time to set off home in the motorway rush hour, 3.5hrs after the meds first began!

So, now it's back to waiting. I'm obviously worried that the cholesterol thing will require more investigation (he has a docs appt next week re; this, as he needs to start managing it anyway) and that they will want some more info about what they did during his Op. in 2002....but then again, I wonder if CIC will have enough on with applicants who get put in categories B, C and D and will be happy that we're categorised as A's. Has anyone had a similar experience, where they were worried about something being followed up on & it never was?

Good luck to anyone else going through this and I hope this has helped & I didn't bore you to tears ...
Katie

CanadianDreams

Hi Katie

Great post, it's nice to know what they expect!

I wouldn't worry to much about the cholseterol as it's manageble and it will not be a drain on canadian resources, he may not even require medication, best to have a fasting blood test to get a true reading.


Will keep my fingers crossed for you guys

Anna

Lisahjah

Thanks for the post. I glad it's fairly straight forward as we have ours on Monday. Only slightly worried now.

Dave n Ailsa

Brilliant post Katie, informative and funny

misskatpaw

Thanks Anna, yes he's off to the Docs on Thurs to do a 'before' reading, then under the threat of violence, he will be doing everything to reduce it so he can then go for an 'after' reading (which is of course the one that will be submitted to CIC, should they ask )

Good luck for Monday!!

I'm really glad that I may have helped reduce you from "very worried" to now only "slightly worried"

Good luck for Monday!!

Thanks Dave, hopefully yours won't be *too* far away :thumb up:

Anyone else get picked up on 'little things' that were/were not asked about by CIC?

Katie

Zhanna

Thank you Misskatpaw, great post, so very useful, and I feel my blood pressure is up already :-) All the best to you!

misskatpaw

Hi Zhanna, glad it helped. It doesn't take much for the blood pressure to rise, 'specially sat in that seat in the surgery!

Katie

helcat12

If anyone wants to know what questions the doctor asks then the form he/she fills in is here for you to read.

http://immican.chat.ru/imm5419e.pdf

The questions seem very detailed bit in practice it is all done very quickly.
At least, our Canadian medical was so fast that I can't even remember being asked all the questions although I am sure I was.

The physical examination was a breeze and no-one had to take off anything they would have been embarrassed about.

I worried about this so much because I have been borderline blood pressure for all my adult life. (130-140/80-90) and although my UK doctor knows this and it has never caused me any difficulties, I did have panics about the meds stress pushing me over into territory they would worry about.
But, everything was perfectly fine and nothing to report.

I think we (along with everyone else) worried about this far too much and honestly there is nothing to it.

misskatpaw

Thanks for the link, although I'm glad I didn't read it before do the med as it appears daunting with all the medical terms! . In reality, it wasn't half as bad. In fact, I don't remember her asking me half of those questions, or if she did, she phrased them differently. I don't think she'd would've ticked the 'any evidence of recent, unintentional weight loss' as a yes!!

In what format do you receive PPR's, via letter or email?

helcat12

They absolutely whizz through the questions, if our DMP is anything to go by and they do paraphrase.

When I saw the questionnaire I thought that it was going to take ages but we were done in no time at all.

We got our PPR by e-mail.
Request 21st December.
Passports sent 3rd January (to avoid Christmas delivery issues)

Now waiting for them to come back.

misskatpaw

Nice one

Your PPR was quick at just a smidge over 3 weeks after meds, wasn't it? Having noted other peoples timelines, I was thinking minimum 6 weeks onwards for PPR (if we pass )

Hope they're back with you soon

helcat12

Yes, it was amazingly quick.
The DMP's own leaflets said that it might take 3 weeks for them to get the test results back and then send the file to CIC, so we were expecting a lot longer than that before London got their act together to send us PPR.

Some people have waited much longer than us between meds and PPR - 3 months or so has been reported for applications submitted around the same time as us, but then our processing has been quite long for our cohort so maybe they thought we deserved our passport requests quickly.

Hope yours are done smoothly and quickly, too.

misskatpaw

Thanks

Yep here's hoping for a quick response...put us out of our misery, once & for all!

Lisahjah

Well we've got back from our medicals today. What was I worrying about!Two adults and three kids and hey they could not have done more to be helpful. We went to the bridgewater hospital in Manchester. Its a really modern place with one small area designated for emigration medicals, so no travelling for X-rays or blood tests as it was a room off the corridor. It was absolutely fantastic, and I only booked on Friday. The doctor was so friendly and made the children completely at ease with the exam, even when down to their under-ware. I would definitely recommend booking this place if possible.

misskatpaw

Fantastic news! Wishing we'd have booked that place too but hey, it's done now!

Wondering how CanadianDream's med went to.......?

Katie