I Want The Finest Leeches Known To Humanity…
Oh, woe is me. I’ve just spent the last two and a half days in bed with Mild Flu. Even woe-er is me, Mild Flu is not the same of our Trinidadian pool boy … Have I made that joke before? Fuck, I think I have. To the self-flagellation chambers!
I’m no Catherine Earnshaw; I don’t enjoy being sick. I enjoy the thought of being sick, but always when I’m in full health and half an hour into some stressful overtime at work. “If I were sick,” I tell myself, “I could be at home now, propped up on Lemsip, writing astounding prose in a most attractively feverish manner.” I don’t know why I think that running a temperature would turn me into Salman fucking Rushdie, but it’s my fever-dream and I’ll nurture it how I see fit(s).
I have also a deep fear of going to the doctor.
It’s not just because I’m terrified of needles (I am; I go white and faint dead away … like Catherine Earshaw, I suppose. Huzzah!). It’s not even because of all the pregnant women in the waiting room, who remind me of needles – blood tests, amnihooks, epidurals; and the long probing things get you into all the trouble in the first place, as Sister Baptista Immaculata used to tell me. I am terrified of doctors because every fucking time I go to see one, my symptoms disappear as I walk into the surgery, leaving me looking like one of those crazy, Catherine Earshaw-like fantasists.
“It was here a minute ago,” I mutter, poking around for an inflamed tonsil.
The second last time I went to the doctor, it was because of an incredible bout of migraines that abated immediately after I handed the chemist €40 for less than a handful of minute tablets that looked like Ecstasy babies.
“You’d get shot in Limerick for peddling this shite, you glorified fucking grocer quack,” I snarled. “Oh, and a Deep Heat pack, please.”
The Deep Heat was for my suddenly-slipshod spine, because of which I could barely turn my neck, an occurence that frightened me like a whiff of cheap perfume from the bulky wrists of a cannibalistic wrestler. It later turned out to be a tiny cyst on the back of my neck; what it lacked in size and severity, it made up for in location, location, location.
The last last time I went to the doctor, it was because I was feeling ever dizzy and disoriented, which I had put down to my cutting meat out of my diet. So I began taking iron supplements, but the dizziness persisted, and was really beginning to worry me.
“Could be a vitamin B deficiency. Could be vertigo. Could be anaemia. Let’s find out,” said the doc. “Show us yer veins.”
Whimpering, retching and ashen, I got the bloods done, worried about tumours for a week, and was then told that the results were fine.
“Fine?”
“As Christiano Ronaldo’s backside, girl.”
“Then why am I so constantly dizzy?” I howled, which was a total waste of energy because the dizziness went away by itself straight away after. I mean, straight away. Your Bloods Are Fine … whoosh. No more whooshing unawares. Level-headed and plain sailing from that moment on. It was fucking bizarre.
It’s one of my greatest fears – ok, outside of needles – to be thought of as a hypochondriac. I hate the medical world as much as I hate Land of Leather; all those clinical smiles, the artificial smells, the damned intrusiveness, yes, I really do hate Land of Leather. And hospitals. God I hate hospitals. I’ve been admitted to them three times and I figure that’s quite enough Dettol and cranky nurses for one lifetime. So I couldn’t possibly be a hypochondriac, see?
As well as that, I’m considerate to a fault (in real life, obviously; stop fucking chortling, you massive fanny). I really don’t like taking up anyone’s time when they have better things to be doing, and firmly believe that doctors have over-protective mothers to sell antibiotics to and old people’s twinges to assuage, and therefore don’t really need me bounding in on top of them with anything less than a shattered lung, or something. Honest to Jaysus.
I doubt I’ll have enough time to explain all of this to my boss when he asks for a sick note, though.
Perhaps I’ll just look all fiery until he stops asking. Very Bronte. Very chic.
What you have is real. I know, because you gave it to me. It’s Martian Death Plague, or whatever the thing is that all the trendy kids are getting (can’t be Swine Flu, we had that in March), and my fever was 102.8 today. What’s worse, the sprog got it, too, poor wee dote.
I dislike doctors because they usually put me on some pill that I have a reaction to and then mimics some other disease. Like when my doctor prescribed Singulair for my allergies and then that shut down my kidneys and they thought I had Lupus. Good times. At least, being poor, I’m not having to pay for any of this so-called medical treatment. But I now know why they call it “practicing medicine,” it’s because they can’t get it fucking right.
Do you think if we both started up a petition, we could get Dr. House to feel us up? I wouldn’t say no to a breast exam. Or even just playing doctor.
Seriously, though, I hope you feel better, and I know how you feel about the hypochondriac thing. You should meet my dad; whatever symptom someone has, he suddenly has it, too. I remember when I was a teenager and my mom had a migraine and then of course my dad claimed to have one also. My mom turned to him and snapped “REALLY?! Is it your period, too?!” I just about died laughing.
Perhaps he had Man-Period? It’s less messy but you’re legally allowed drink twice as much alcohol to dull Teh Pain.
I don’t want Dr. House feeling me up. I don’t care how brilliant he is, he’ll always be Lieutenant George to me.
Did the pig gitya. Well, lemon honey a clove or two, water hot enough to melt the honey and drink. All for less than e5.
As to the medics, since meeting vast numbers of baby doc’s, I cannot take any of them seriously. Added to the fact I fully hold them to be thick anyway.
I didn’t notice that you had been sniffing wrestler’s wrists lately, not that I notice much these days me.
Give hypocondriacs a break Sweary. There’s nothing wrong with them (except absolutely everything, obviously).
Flann, I’m using that one . K ?
Use away Sniffle.