Invoking the Scottish Play?

May 02

That was interesting, the doctor visit.

My usual medical experience, from twenty years ago, is of a ferrety jolly man who’d peer between your legs, tell you he would be able to see much better if you lost some weight, write you a prescription for the Placebo of the Week (usually calcium) and pack you off with a slap on the bum. Well, not an actual slap on the bum, but that’s the emotional tone I’m giving you.

Yesterday we didn’t even get to the interior introspection until the second half of the appointment. Instead, the doctor had my family medical history out of me “oh yes,” I agreed with her, “lots of cancer. Although one case was – you know, he worked with heavy metals.”

And she had my symptoms, or rather, symptom in front of her. And she peered at the notes she’d made for a goodly while, while the clock ticed and I’d memorised everything to do with the deer in the forest of the poster on her wall.

Eventually she had me hop on the bed to see if her diagnosis might be correct. Her words, not mine. I was thoroughly impressed – it was very House of her.

She put on gloves, but had one on inside out so had to start again. And then her finger tore through one, so again. At fifty bucks a session, you could buy kid skin gloves I thought. Or giant putting-your-hand-up-a-cow’s-bum sized rubber ones. Then we had the internal inspection.
“Just relax” she said, and it’s lucky she did as her hand was in a place that would normally inspire me to clench. I looked at Bambi, either about to run out of or into his forest, as my lower bits – which I don’t name not out of coyness, but because I don’t know with absolute certainty what bits are where, kind of stomach/ uterus/ bladder region – were pushed down and sideways while inside me somewhere the fingers poked and searched for corresponding insidey bits.

“You might feel a bit of discomfort” she suggested. A dentist is discomfortable. I was too busy trying to be relaxed and not clenched to be discomforted. It was a question of context.

Eventually she emerged, just as I was starting to forget what she looked like.
“Yes, you’re right” she said “there’s definitely something there.”
If she was alarmed by my delight, she didn’t say. I wasn’t being paranoid! There is something going on- exciting!

Back at her desk she typed out a thing for a blood test she wanted me to get, told me she was sending me for a scan, and said she thought I may have fibroids.

If I could put in an order for an ‘illness’, I’d have pushed for something tropical and – you know – one off. The kind of thing she’d rush into the next office and bring in a bevy of other doctors to marvel over. It could be incurable, I don’t mind. So long as it’s cool and mysteriously named.

But instead I’ve been told I have something that sounds like an ingredient for a haggis.