Fans of my work will recall the intolerable dolour I endured last summer vis-à-vis a simple blood test and x-ray that seemed to span the best part of a day. While the blood test indicated that I was in rude good health (liver and kidneys doing fine, despite years of lacing gin with sleeping pills), my nausea persisted. Was it all in the mind? Certainly the loss of appetite and resultant weight loss could suggest an incipient anorexia (provoked, perhaps, by vicious slurs that I was getting a pot belly?). Let those who say I am a bitter man take heed, for I happily descry the silver lining to this cloud: whether it be through nausea or anorexia, I lost a stone and a half, and for that I am thankful.
As the symptoms persisted with no known physical cause, I was ultimately rewarded with a referral to the hospital. I say ‘ultimately’ because if the cause of my irritated stomach had in fact been a cancer of the upper digestive tract it would have killed me by then (stomach cancer is a commendably ruthless and efficient killer). Much to my perturbation I was invited to an appointment not at Hillingdon Hospital (10 minutes walk away) but to the wilds of Mount Vernon. The place is not so much a unified hospital as a scattering of half-derelict buildings on a maze of a site. I therefore set off in good time, with a book of Russian short stories to maintain the necessary morbid mood. I arrived early, and had the foresight to enter the grounds by the one entrance that was actually in proximity to the building I was to attend.
Once I had climbed the solitary stairs to the clinic I was relieved of the bottle of piss I had been obliged to stow in my bag. I didn’t have to wait too long before the specialist was ready to see me. He was an Hispanic gentleman, and could therefore not pronounce nausea. There was a bit of the same old same old: yes, sudden weight loss is a worry, blah blah; I was a little unimpressed when he then asked if I could explain the loss of weight and appetite (um, isn’t that his job?). Was I, he pursued, under any great stress? As a lifetime of profound existential malaise had not made me perpetually queasy, it was fair to deduce that any other ennui could not on its own sicken me so wholly.
In order to rule out a few things, a blood test would be necessary, he advised. I blithely noted that I had had a blood test a few months back, and that the results were embarrassingly ordinary. He looked on his computer for corroboration of these results, and you’ll never guess what?
So, with my last results lost, deleted, or never even added to my records, I was obliged to have more blood drawn. The doctor said he would also refer me for an endoscopy, just to see what’s occurring; to further the pretence of actually taking me seriously, he also wrote a prescription for omeprazole. An anti-ulcer drug eh? Despite me having no symptoms of an ulcer.
I took myself to the blood-letting clinic at Mount Vernon (located in another of the disparate outhouses). In stark contrast to my ordeal at Hillingdon, here there was not a single soul in the waiting room. Even so I obligingly took a ticket and waited (the phlebotomist was in the blood-room talking loudly on the phone – a personal call too, from what I could gather, although in the absence of patients he probably had little else to do). I was summoned after a short delay. As a left-hander I am always heartened when blood-letters invariably go for the right arm (do they think blood is better on that side?). However I too had been going for my right arm of late, and had little inclination to share my scars with a stranger. I therefore proffered my mighty left arm, and won great praise for the robustness of my artery: “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I missed that!” I wondered if it was a desolate chat-up line; however I wondered more what I could achieve if I were ambidextrous.
That done, I wandered the darkling grounds (has anyone since Keats used the word darkling?) in search of the hospital pharmacy. With hindsight I should have dropped off the prescription, then had my blood let, and then returned to pick up the drugs. As it was, the pharmacy lumbered me with the longest wait of the day (half an hour at least): I could have offered to pick the pills myself, but proximity to so much codeine is not always a good thing.
So concluded my first appointment at the Endoscopy Clinic. Dare you read of the second?
As the symptoms persisted with no known physical cause, I was ultimately rewarded with a referral to the hospital. I say ‘ultimately’ because if the cause of my irritated stomach had in fact been a cancer of the upper digestive tract it would have killed me by then (stomach cancer is a commendably ruthless and efficient killer). Much to my perturbation I was invited to an appointment not at Hillingdon Hospital (10 minutes walk away) but to the wilds of Mount Vernon. The place is not so much a unified hospital as a scattering of half-derelict buildings on a maze of a site. I therefore set off in good time, with a book of Russian short stories to maintain the necessary morbid mood. I arrived early, and had the foresight to enter the grounds by the one entrance that was actually in proximity to the building I was to attend.
Once I had climbed the solitary stairs to the clinic I was relieved of the bottle of piss I had been obliged to stow in my bag. I didn’t have to wait too long before the specialist was ready to see me. He was an Hispanic gentleman, and could therefore not pronounce nausea. There was a bit of the same old same old: yes, sudden weight loss is a worry, blah blah; I was a little unimpressed when he then asked if I could explain the loss of weight and appetite (um, isn’t that his job?). Was I, he pursued, under any great stress? As a lifetime of profound existential malaise had not made me perpetually queasy, it was fair to deduce that any other ennui could not on its own sicken me so wholly.
In order to rule out a few things, a blood test would be necessary, he advised. I blithely noted that I had had a blood test a few months back, and that the results were embarrassingly ordinary. He looked on his computer for corroboration of these results, and you’ll never guess what?
So, with my last results lost, deleted, or never even added to my records, I was obliged to have more blood drawn. The doctor said he would also refer me for an endoscopy, just to see what’s occurring; to further the pretence of actually taking me seriously, he also wrote a prescription for omeprazole. An anti-ulcer drug eh? Despite me having no symptoms of an ulcer.
I took myself to the blood-letting clinic at Mount Vernon (located in another of the disparate outhouses). In stark contrast to my ordeal at Hillingdon, here there was not a single soul in the waiting room. Even so I obligingly took a ticket and waited (the phlebotomist was in the blood-room talking loudly on the phone – a personal call too, from what I could gather, although in the absence of patients he probably had little else to do). I was summoned after a short delay. As a left-hander I am always heartened when blood-letters invariably go for the right arm (do they think blood is better on that side?). However I too had been going for my right arm of late, and had little inclination to share my scars with a stranger. I therefore proffered my mighty left arm, and won great praise for the robustness of my artery: “I wouldn’t be very good at my job if I missed that!” I wondered if it was a desolate chat-up line; however I wondered more what I could achieve if I were ambidextrous.
That done, I wandered the darkling grounds (has anyone since Keats used the word darkling?) in search of the hospital pharmacy. With hindsight I should have dropped off the prescription, then had my blood let, and then returned to pick up the drugs. As it was, the pharmacy lumbered me with the longest wait of the day (half an hour at least): I could have offered to pick the pills myself, but proximity to so much codeine is not always a good thing.
So concluded my first appointment at the Endoscopy Clinic. Dare you read of the second?
