Invasion

I am not a well man.  Up until recently my doctor and the Obscure Diseases Clinic at Leicester Royal Infirmary were baffled by my condition, but it's been confirmed recently that I'm suffering from acute hypochondria.  This has come as something of a relief. Now that I have given my condition a name I feel much more relaxed and able to deal with the difficult years ahead.

I feel comfortable in middle-age with illness and the treatments that go with them.  It wasn’t always thus, however.  When I was young I couldn't deal with hospitals at all and had problems with any procedure that involved sticking things in a part of my body that wasn’t designed for such a purpose.  Visiting elderly relatives in hospital and seeing all the bags of blood, drips and tubes was impossible.

As I've got older and had one or two hospital stays, I've become used to clinical environments and necessary invasive procedures.  A complete list of all the illnesses over the course of my life can be provided on request, but one of these required a barium enema. This was conducted at a small cottage hospital just outside Redditch by a couple of elderly ladies wearing flowery 'pinnies' (I'm sure they were clinical garments but they looked exactly like the things each of my grandmothers wore when they were in the kitchen).  As the barium was 'introduced' they were chatting quite happily about the terrible state of Redditch town centre and what they were getting for their husbands’ tea when they got home.  What they weren't talking about was the six foot tube (I may be exaggerating, but it certainly felt like it was about six foot long) they had just inserted up my bottom. This everyday approach to something that, to me, was not something that happened every day served to relax me and removed any embarrassment I might have been feeling.

I have also had an angiogram. The angiogram involved sticking a tube into my groin and feeding it through until it reached the heart.  Again, this was a routine procedure for the consultant that treated me, but definitely not routine for me.  On this occasion I was also completely relaxed about the whole thing, not because of two elderly ladies in pinnies, but because of the handful of ‘happy pills’ I had begged the nurse to give me (this visit to the hospital will probably have a blog post all of its own at some point in the future.  It involves an electric razor, an attractive nurse and me being completely out of it.  It will also involve a hilarious joke with the punchline “and there was a small prick”).  If you throw in the three prostrate examinations I’ve had (although one of those times was at a church fundraising event, so probably doesn't count) and the operation on my nose I think I’ve got over my childhood fear of hospitals once and for all.

So, if I can have a general anaesthetic, a happy pill or an elderly pinafored lady to distract me I think I can cope with just about anything the hand of fate throws at me.  There are two things that still give me cold sweats, however.  The thought of having any treatment on, in or round the back of the eyeball makes me feel sick.  And if there is ever anything wrong with my prostate, I’m not sure I will be able to deal with the tube they will use to treat it (Google ‘enlarged prostate treatment’ if you want the details).

To lighten the mood, I felt it was a good idea to include a couple of my favourite ‘Doctor, doctor…’ jokes from the wonderful Old Jews Telling Jokes.  If you like these, there are loads more available to download for free as an iTunes podcast.