I shuffle uncomfortably in my chair. I have stomach cramps, so I'm at the doctors. I woke up in the morning and my stomach hurt. I figured it was some kind of indigestion, which in itself is pretty rare. I'm just the sort of guy you'd expect to get indigestion, I eat too fast, I eat too much, I eat everything and anything. But I never actually get indigestion- I figure my stomach is just used to the abuse. Still, I'd spent a whole weekend sitting in the sun eating olives and ostrich biltong, so it wasn't exactly suprising when I woke up feeling crook. I popped into the corner store on my way to work. I quite like my corner store. I'm in there about three times a day and while the two guys behind the counter have never really responded to my cheery enquiries as to how their day is going, I get the feeling that they quite like me, too. They nod at me when I come in the door.
"Hi, do you guys have any antacid?"
"No, no antacid."
I get the feeling they don't know what I'm talking about, and I have to admit I've never done this before either, so I don't know what to ask for myself. Still, they must have something. I crane my head around them to see what's near the painkillers. I see something called Pepcid-two.
"How about that stuff, then?"
By the time I've gotten to work it feels like someone has grabbed my intenstines in two fists and is twisting them round. It comes in spasms and waves- on peaks I literally double over in pain. I tell Katie that if my situation hasn't improved by ten, I'm calling a Doctor and going home. I'm sort of suprised by how sad I am at the thought of having to leave work early. The feeling has gone by ten. It's back at ten-thirty. I tell Katie if it hasn't gone by eleven I'm calling a Doctor and going home. It's gone by eleven. It's back at eleven-thirty. You see where I'm going with this.
At two I finally break (the pain's so bad I'm like, sweating and stuff. I don't cry out, though. When you're a kid all sorts of pain makes you scream and cry out. When you're an adult it kind of seems a bit pointless. Who are you crying out to? The pain was ostensibly the worst pain I'd been in for, ooh, ages, but I still didn't make any noise. What would be the point of that?) and call the Doctor. I tell Katie I'm off in half an hour and I struggle to get as much done as possible before I leave. I'm kind of annoyed that there's still loads of work to do when I finally exit.
My Doctor is tiny. He makes a terrible joke every few minutes and then spends the next minute sort of giggling to himself. It's actually kind of cute. The last time I saw him he wrote one of his jokes into the prescription. The time before that he name-dropped his own award into the prescription. His handwriting is unreadable and his spelling is atrocious. I kind of think for a minute that if I'd applied myself a little, I could have been a Doctor. Then I remember that sick people gross me out a little and it never would have worked.
I tell him my symptoms and he says it's the fifth time he's heard those symptoms today. It wasn't indigestion, something is going around. I pull out the crumpled pack of Pepcid-two.
"Those won't have helped." he says, unhelpfully.
We discuss my wide variety of complaints. Beyond the stomach ache, I have a cyst under my left ear (it looks like an enormous pimple, it's awful). I ask if I can get it removed. He says the NHS doesn't pay for cosmetic surgery, so I tell him my mother had cancer and had a lump removed from her ear. He grudgingly writes me a referral. Geez dude, it's not like they charge you for it.
He asks if I've had my flu vaccination this year. I say I don't even remember the last time I had a flu vaccination. He says that's not so good, and goes to get a syringe to jab into me. While he's gone, I start reading whatever's on his desk. I can't really help it, I have this thing. It's sort of like attention-deficit disorder, except I don't really have trouble holding my attention on one thing for long periods of time. I read books cover-to-cover without moving. I have loads of focus. I just have trouble doing nothing. If I'm not reading or watching or listening or consuming information in some fashion, I go a little nuts. Tube journeys with nothing to read are my worst nightmare. Getting to sleep is a real pain. I have loud thoughts.
The document on his desk reads a bit like this:
Patient Name Andrew Link dob 20 July 1921 - You prescribed Hexadodramine to patient on 20/04/06. You did not ask patient what other medications he was on, and so did not learn that patient was already on Lithium, which causes hypertension when mixed with Hexadodramine. It is very important that establish pre-existing medications before prescribing new treatments.Patient Name Amanda Poole dob 21 March 1932 - You failed to take patients blood pressure before prescribing Buscopan, which raises blood pressure. Patient had elevated blood pressure and this condition was exacerbated by prescription of Buscopan, leading to complications with the patient. You must check every patients blood pressure before prescribing medicine that alters blood pressure!
And so on and so forth. It was, quite literally, a catalogue of errors. I started to panic a little. My doctor, it seemed, did not know what he was doing. This did not seem at all at odds with his personality, or his handwriting for that matter. I was in big trouble. He walked in with the flu virus. At least that's what he said it was. He probably picked it randomly from the shelf for all I knew. He asked me to roll up my shirt arm. Could he find a vein? What if he injected air straight into me? Was I going to be the next item on his not-to-do list?
Patient Name Danzor the Deadstructor dob 06 February 1977 - You injected a bubble of air directly into the patient, causing his heart to explode painfully. It is very important that you do not inject patients with bubbles of air. Also, you misdiagnosed his stomach cramps.
Jab. Slurp. Pop. All done. He started to write me a prescription.
"I'm prescribing you something for your stomach cramps."
"What is it?" I said, gulping loudly, my heart racing.
"Buscopan!"
Yes, it's true, 