My Foot Hurts. I Know I Need to Go. I Can’t Make the Appointment.

I’ve been limping.

Not dramatically — not the kind of limp that makes strangers ask if you’re okay. Just the kind where you stand up after sitting too long and there’s a moment where your body reminds you that something isn’t right. Where a walk that should feel good starts to feel like a negotiation.

There was some swelling in my leg during the heatwave. That’s mostly gone now. I’ve been stretching. I cut back on salt. I’m getting on with it, the way you do.

The thing is — I know what I need to do. I need to make a doctor’s appointment. And here in the UK, that appointment won’t cost me a penny. No copay. No bill arriving three weeks later that makes you question every decision you made in that exam room. Nothing.

And I still haven’t called.

I’ve been trying to figure out why.

Part of me wants to blame logistics — the phone lines, the 8am scramble for appointments that sometimes feels like trying to win tickets to something. And yes, that’s real. But if I’m honest, that’s not what’s stopping me. I navigated that before, for other things. I know how to do it.

What’s actually stopping me is something quieter and harder to name.

I grew up in the US healthcare system. Thirty-something years of it. Thirty-something years of a low-level hum in the background of every health decision — is this worth it? What will this cost? What if they find something and then what? You learn to do a calculation before you even pick up the phone. Is the worry about what might be wrong bigger than the worry about what it might cost to find out?

Sometimes the answer was no. Sometimes you just… waited. Stretched. Cut back on salt. Got on with it.

I don’t live in that system anymore. Intellectually, I know that. But apparently my nervous system didn’t get the memo.

Because here I am, doing all the same things. Managing it at home. Postponing. Telling myself it’s probably nothing. Doing everything except the one thing that’s now actually free to do.

I think this is what no one tells you about moving countries. The system changes. The fear doesn’t — not automatically, not just because the rules changed. Fear doesn’t update itself like software. It just sits there, running in the background, shaping decisions you don’t even realise you’re making.

I’m not writing this from the other side of it. I haven’t made the appointment yet. I’m writing it from inside the avoidance, which feels like the more honest place to write it from.

But I’m going to make the call. This week. Because I know I have to. But I'm still uneasy.

And I’ll let you know what happens — not because a dodgy foot is particularly compelling content, but because I suspect I’m not the only one who brought their American healthcare anxiety with them when they moved. And if that’s you, maybe it’s useful to know that someone else is still unlearning it too.