What's Up, Doc?

14th Jan 2009

How much do doctors really know? As I wrote in an earlier blog, some time ago I had puffy feet. They kept ballooning up around the ankles. Off I bounced to the quack.

“Hmmm. Let’s do some tests.”

We did blood tests, blood pressure tests, we did a chest x-ray (?), we searched on-line on ‘Puffy Feet for Dummies’... and at the end of two months the conclusion was:

“Why don’t you try sitting differently?”

Hmmm....

Recently, I had some pains in the lower abdomen/groin region, so off I went to the new quack, the old one having left, (or maybe he is just lost, endlessly cycling the M25, unable to find his exit?)

“Hmmm, well one thing it definitely is not is a hernia”, he said, after more tests.
“Let’s get the consultant to look at you, eh?”.

A month later, the consultant was too busy, so his registrar saw me.

“Hmmm, it’s definitely a hernia.”
Oh yeah?
“We’d better do some tests”.

Another month later I had an ultrasound visual examination, which was interesting. My (ahem) ‘lower abdomen’ was liberally covered in jelly and they did a live scan, watching a monitor. I fought back the overwhelming desire to ask ‘Is it a boy or a girl?’ (it probably wouldn’t be the first time they’d heard that one, eh?). Nothing there.

“We’d better do a colonoscopy - and have a little look around”.
Oh good.

Another month and it was time for the camera up the bum. Now the worst thing about this, I found out, is simply the laxatives you have to take the day before - they’re the industrial strength ones... The hospital visit, however, was great. First came the cabaret. As I was scheduled to be the last to go into surgery, I watched others return, still drugged and out of it, and more accurately, listened to them return. Jings - it was like the campfire scene from Blazing Saddles, but under blanket. A ward full of farting in various keys - tenor farts, alto trills and others, more 'basso profundo', shook the beds. I had to give up pretending to read the ‘paper and just hide my head for a while...

Eventually it was my turn and I was wheeled in. I watched, fascinated, as five different injections went into my arm and was just about to ask what they all were... when I woke up back in the ward an hour later. And whatever was in them, I want more - I felt great! I was ready to leap tall buildings with a single bound! My son had, as instructed, come in to help someone who ‘may still be drugged and need assistance’. Well, the only assistance I needed was being persuaded we should take the bus to the pub rather than simply fly there... And then for a large Chinese takeaway - wonderful.

The results? Nothing there either. So, two weeks later, it was back to the consultant. As he summarised the negative results, I thought to point out that no one had checked my prostate. There was silence for a few moments.

“Oh. Didn’t we do that?”
“Er, no, actually.”
“Hmmm. Let’s just pop into the next room, shall we?”
Oh, look - it’s jelly time again...

Well, that turned out to be ok, too. And so finally:

“What now then, doc?”
“Hmmm. It’ll probably just go away - whatever it was.”

Aye. Well it was a few months ago...

And I’ll sit differently. I mean, you never know, eh? Still, I’m like a Ford with a brand new MOT now - good for at least another year. Everything still seems to work as the Intelligent Designer planned, and my blood seems to be good enough to sup with a little liver and fried onion, Clarise... Even my puffy feet sorted themselves out a while ago.

See? My quack probably knew what he was talking about after all...

Hmmm....