Is It Just Me? (18 page)

Well, I don’t know whether or not I have ’flu! That’s why I’m here – I was rather hoping you might tell me. Isn’t that your job? What does one do, in that situation? Stand outside and give oneself a swift self-diagnosis? Ask some passing pedestrians to feel our foreheads and see what they think? No, you want a professional opinion.

Rebelliously, you brave it and enter The Waiting Room. A sweaty germ-hole and paranoia breeding-ground. Everywhere you look, there are signs on the wall alerting you to the presence of diseases you’ve never worried about before but are suddenly 100 per cent sure you might have: chlamydia, cyclosporiasis (try pronouncing that for the laugh), anthrax –

Bella said she had chlamydia – she kept the rumour going for two terms. But it TOTALLY wasn’t true. She was just showing off that she was the only girl in the school that had actually had sex. I know, it’s too shocking to believe.

Thanks for that, Little M (and may I say, MDRC, late developers win in the end). On the walls of surgeries (or Hug-Me-Better Love-Domes) I’d like to suggest that – perhaps around the time The Wonderful Laws of Miranda-Land are brought in – only images of puppies, kittens, and rudely healthy, ruddy-cheeked children eating ice creams are displayed. And, might I add, when it comes to Miranda-Land, diseases will be pronounceable and simply nicer-sounding. Instead of jaundice you’d have ‘Sunshine Radiance’. Cirrhosis would be ‘Rose Petal Flakis’. You’ll positively
want
diseases for their names in Miranda-Land.

My surgery waiting-room anxiety is in no way relieved by the company I’m forced to keep there. At least eight times out of ten I’ll find myself sitting next to the – I believe this is the official term – waiting-room nutter. You know the type: there’ll be ten free seats, but he’ll choose to cheerily plonk himself down next to you. For a chat. With his breath. Why is it someone with halitosis (or, in Miranda-Land, Personal Mouth Aroma) always chooses to use a sentence consisting of a row of breath-blowing consonants? On one occasion the fellow sat down next to me and his opening gambit was: ‘I Definitely Don’t Desire the Dreary
Reader’s Digest
, Dear.’ Each ‘D’ blew a waft of retch-making smell my way.

The sitting-next-to-me-when-there-are-free-seats part was unacceptable enough. In this country, we
never
sit next to each other unless absolutely necessary. In the waiting room, we’ll dot ourselves about and always have a chair-sized gap between us. That gap must never be filled: people simply must not encroach on our personal space. That’s just how it is.

To avoid sitting next to someone in a ‘Better-Me Playground’ (another fine term for a surgery, methinks), I’ve gone so far as to sit on one of those tiny little chairs in the crèche area. (Obviously, I wouldn’t risk sitting in one with arms for fear of standing up with it still attached to my bottom.) If there’s no crèche chair available, I might sit in one of those small animals or cars where you put your money in and they move from side to side. Or rock back and forth. (What are they called? Let’s call them Miniature Back-Forth Animal Fun-Mobiles.) I may look ridiculous, but at least I haven’t broken any British rules regarding personal space.

Now, I have another story for you. I fear that, much like the pigeon-on-head incident, this one
will
just be me. I was sitting on one of those Miniature Back-Forth Animal Fun-Mobiles, when a friend spotted me and, without my noticing, snuck up and put some money in before hiding behind a nearby door. The contraption started up, and I was propelled forward in a violent rocking motion. As this was unexpected, I screamed loudly, thus drawing attention to the fact that a 6’ 1”, thirtysomething woman was rocking backwards and forwards on a small plastic cow. I carried on until it finished, too frightened to dismount while it was moving. Just me? Thought so.

By the time I actually get to see the doctor, I’m usually a bundle of nerves. And when I’m in any way nervous, I have a tendency to attempt what I call ‘awkward hokey banter’. This tendency worsens if the doctor is male.

Oh no, are we still awkward with doctors?

Afraid so. I shall demonstrate to My Dear Reader Chum with a short scene, and just hope that perhaps at least one of you understands this doctor plight:

I am SO embarrassed. I’ve literally hidden inside my jumper.

I know, I know. It’s excruciating. We just can’t do doctors, as it very much were. And indeed, MDRC, one of the very few true scenes in my sitcom . . .

What?

Oh, you weren’t meant to hear that. Ignore.

Wait – no, has someone based a sitcom on me? Oh, that is mortificato. Typical, classic. Of course that would happen to me. I am such a plonker. A
plonker
and a dweeb and a loser of the highest order. OF COURSE someone would go and use my life to put in a sitcom. I’m surprised you haven’t emigrated by now.

Well, we haven’t. But I’m glad you can acknowledge what a total dweeb we are, and always have been, with doctors.

I have less trouble with the doctor-flirting nonsense in a hospital. Perhaps the institutional, municipal, ‘No, really, you might die here’ vibe knocks it out of me a bit. Nevertheless, the hospital visit presents its own unique challenges to the dignity. If nothing else, can we please discuss the hospital gown? I mean, there’s probably some very clever reason for having a foot-wide gap at the back of it, but the only reason I can think of is so that the porters can all have a jolly good laugh.

Like a grand old rustic bicycle, I have to be dragged into hospital from time to time for check-ups and repairs on some minor but tedious health niggles. Given that I’m a regular visitor to said fine establishments, although predominantly now less neurotic, I thought it wise to do a little research into how they’re run. What I found out was that while the majority of those professionals working in hospitals are to be admired and respected,
post
-research I don’t wholly trust the system.

During my research, I came across the following sentences from patients’ notes, which were typed up by actual medical secretaries at an actual NHS hospital. They’re absolutely true. Are you ready? Please prepare yourself to be both amused and alarmed by my findings:

1. She stated that she had been constipated for most of her life until she got a divorce.
   
2. Patient’s medical history has been remarkably insignificant with only a 40-pound weight gain in the past three days.
   
3. She has no rigors or shaking chills but her husband states she was very hot in bed last night.
   
4. Patient has chest pain if she lies on her left side for over a year.
   
5. On the second day the knee was better and on the third day it disappeared.
   
6. Patient has left her white blood cells at another hospital.
   
7. The patient is tearful and crying constantly. She also appears to be depressed.
   
8. The patient has been depressed since she began seeing me in 1993.
   
9. Discharge status: ‘Alive, but without my permission.’
   
10. Patient had waffles for breakfast and anorexia for lunch.
    
11. She is numb from her toes down.
    
12. Patient was alert and unresponsive.
    

Wow. I’m proper panicking now. What kind of things do we go to hospital for?

Um, well, as I said, nothing too grim. Although a complaint of the traditionally embarrassing variety. MDRC, I’ll try to be delicate here, but if you’re of a squeamish temperament regarding matters of, shall we say, bottom indigestion . . .

Urh, urh, urh! I thought my life couldn’t get much worse.

. . . I suggest you skip the remainder of this paragraph. Actually, for safety’s sake, I’d disembark Miss Book now, and hop aboard again for the next chapter.

All gone? Good. Now, to the rest of you. So, from time to time, in order to check up on the old Hart colon, I have to have a colonoscopy. Which is, put simply but graphically, a camera up your bum. This generally involves having an enema that, post-procedure, can leave you a little, how can I put this – congested. Windy. Your abdomen has become a mildly distended and highly dangerous area. You can find yourself possessed of an overwhelming desire to fart, plus a total inability to do so ‘safely’, if you catch my drift. Really, it’s wise to take a few quiet hours to oneself when one is in such a condition.

I learnt this the very hard way, whilst attending a rather important meeting at the BBC two hours after my unpleasant procedure (what a truly awful word ‘procedure’ is.
Procedure
. Not a fan), when I believed I was back in the ‘safe zone’. During the meeting I became aware of an urgent need to break wind. I politely excused myself from the room and let forth what I believe was one of the loudest and longest farts in the history of humanity (not wishing to boast or anything, but it really was spectacular). I tried to cover it up by coughing loudly, but the pressure the coughing exerted on my bowel meant that before I knew it, I was ‘following through’, if I may be so delicate.

I rushed to the loo, and had no choice but to remove my pants AND my trousers. I dumped them in the bin and artfully draped my only spare garment – a capacious paisley shawl – around my lower half. Thank God I wore the shawl that day. Thank God and all his angels in heaven.

Now, what does one do in this scenario? I think we’ll all agree there is no rulebook here. It’s an off-piste situation. I wondered what to say and, as I stood frozen in the BBC lavatories staring at my grey, panicked face in the mirror, I considered my options.

They seemed to be going back into the room and saying any one of the following:

1. ‘
   The Fashion Police just called – trousers are so out.
   ’
   
2. ‘
   I felt a sudden altruistic urge and donated my trousers to a children’s charity. What have YOU done today to make you feel proud?
   ’
   
3. ‘
   My trousers were ripped from me by an angry Doberman that I think belongs to Jeremy Paxman.
   ’
   
4. ‘
   Trousers? What trousers? I’ve never worn trousers in my life. I definitely wasn’t wearing them when I left the room. It’s you that’s mad.
   ’
   

Please feel free to use any of the above if, heaven forbid, you should ever find yourself in a similar situation. When I eventually re-entered the room in my paisley kilt/sarong/loin cloth, I noticed a flicker of confusion cross the faces of the executive producers. But I braved it out, indicated my attire with a flourish and announced instead:

‘I think I want to become a nudist, but I’m not sure, so I want to try a bit of a halfway house.’