The Clinic 5: Final Score

            “Do you want to head straight through to the waiting room?”

From first name terms to no names necessary. I wait a couple of minutes before the doctor arrives. She’s happy; she’s got a Christmas card.

            “One doesn’t get many. Oh Julie have we got his results scanned in?” The paper copy isn’t at hand. Probably in the same place they originally put the sample.

            “OK I just need to turn the computer on because I haven’t got the paper copy.”

            “So I gathered.”

            “Here we are. Yes it’s nice to get a Christmas card. OK let’s see. So it says it isn’t a malignant tumour. I wonder why they sent it to my work address, seems a little strange doesn’t it?”

            “Err, I guess. So anyway what does that mean? That it isn’t the early signs of cancer?”

            “That’s right; I suppose they haven’t got my home address.”

            “....”

            “Well, it’s from Janet and Dave, perhaps they got confused when we moved house. So, it is probably as I thought. You remember? The thing we already talked about?”

            “Right, only probably though? What else do the Bi-opsy results say?”

            “Nothing, well, it isn’t conclusive.”

“So we still don’t know?” A fine result after five appointments. Still dermatology is what it is; an enormous game of Guess Who where no-one has bothered to pick the revealing character card before hand. Has the person got blond hair? Maybe. Have they got glasses? Possibly. Is it a man? That much we know. Is it wearing a hat? That might be the problem...

“It just says unidentified skin complaint. Shall we have a look at how it’s getting on?”

            “Why not eh?”

“Oh yes it is still looking very nice isn’t it?”

“Thanks”

“So I think what we can do is to give you some creams and you can then see how that goes. That should be enough to clear it up and then you can use cream again if ever you get another outbreak, OK?”

            “Brilliant.”

            “OK, have a good Christmas!”

            “.....”

I leave, wondering what I’ve been a part of; some cruel experiment or reality TV perhaps? One reserved Doctor’s revenge against those she deems to be sexually promiscuous. Feigning embarrassment she initially gives her victims the upper hand. Fumbling through an extended series of appointments she burns up their precious time just as they may have burned others in a more irresponsible manner. She cuts away and bottles pieces of their genitals, sending them to far off corners of the hospital from where the pieces may never return. She scares them and scars them for weeks to come, taking them out of action for long enough to force them to re-consider their very existence. It’s a sinister, under-hand sexual health crusade! Or, maybe she really is lonely and chronically undersexed. Maybe she really did spend too much time studying and no time socialising in her youth. And though the studying has still failed to bring her to a correct diagnosis, all the time spent intimately getting to know the same patients might bring her a few more Christmas cards at least. 

The Clinic 4: Lost and Found

                “The doctor’s just phoned, she’s going to be ten minutes late.”

I'm thinking this is perhaps the reason mobile phone’s are rarely allowed in waiting rooms, just as the infuriating monotony of a ticking clock is conspicuous only by its absence in this particular hive of inactivity and expressionless faces. To be fair to the doctor this early December day has seen the winter’s first snow of sorts, though it is hardly the sort to leave one lost or stranded, for that it could not be an excuse.

               
                On this my fourth visit, the doctor, when she does eventually arrive, is able to call me by my first name only. It’s a degree of friendly familiarity which will probably work in her favour as she begins to reveal the rather sorry facts.

    “OK, sorry I’m late, I’m ill you see. Now I’m not sure if they have your results.”

    “Oh.”

    “Just let me check, I’ll just turn the computer on, oh it’s not working. Hang on. Ah yes here we are, ‘No record of sample’ oh.”

    “Oh?”

                “Well that’s a little strange; perhaps it’s not on the system yet. I’ll call the nurse in here to try to find out.”

                “Yes, please do.”

She picks up the phone whilst I try to decide whether this is all good fun or whether I should be terrified by the idea of having another hole cut into my penis. As the fear builds in my head (ahem) I’m reminded of a phone conversation I had with the nurse in between these clinic appointments about bi-opsy after care;

                “Well, it looks OK. Should I be washing the area as normal now?”

                “Maybe leave it a day, what exactly did the doctor explain to you?”

                “Err, very little actually.”

                “OK. Right. Well what it is, you know those machines at the fairground?”

                “…”

                “You know, those grabber ones where you can win a soft toy?”

                “…”

                “Hello?”

                “Go on.”

                “Well what we do, after we’ve numbed the area, we reach down like one of those grabber arm thingies and basically tear a bit of the flesh out, just like it’s one of those machines.”

                “The ones that take all you money and never actually give you what you want?”

                “That’s right.”

The nurse enters the consultation room with huge stick of pink candy floss and a pocket full of arcade machine tokens. No soft toy though.

                “Hi nurse, the computer says there’s no record of the sample. Now I filled the form in. Did the sample go in the bag?”

                “Yes definitely, I remember.”

                “Hmm. Are you sure you labeled it.”

                “Yes positive, it can’t be my fault.”

                “Nor mine, I completed the form. Who else would have had it?”

                “The porter?”

                “Ah yes, it must be the porter’s fault.”

Unfortunately, apportioning blame does little to pin point the whereabouts of the piece of my penis which has gone missing, they currently appear oblivious to this fact. In desperation more than hope I employ the tactic developed by mothers everywhere in such situations, admittedly situations where the lost item is something a little less sensitive; logic and reason.

                “Where was it last seen? Surely it needs to be in a fridge of some kind?”

                “No it’s soaked in formaldehyde so it can’t ‘go off’ so to speak, though it seems to have done so. Ha.”

I decide to change tack.

    “Maybe someone stole it for sausage meat what with soaring pork prices.”

    “…”

    “…” 

    “Nurse, do you know the number for the department in charge of the tests and readings, we could try ringing them directly couldn’t we?”

                “...”

                “Ask them what they had for tea last night.”

    “Hi I’m phoning regarding sample number 58546…….OK…….You have no record of ever receiving it?!......Right.”

                “?!”

Between them these two departments have managed to lose a piece of my penis, and how is this delicate news confirmed to me? By allowing me to over-hear the doctor, with no more gravitas than a mild annoyance in her voice, repeating the fact to a presumably very sheepish colleague. On noting my brow has become as creased as other parts of my anatomy which she now knows more intimately, she decides to raise her tone slightly against her assailant;

    “Look this was a penal bi-opsy. I don’t think we want to have to do this whole process again!” God forbid if she has to do it again. “OK yes, please try to find it.”

She returns to me. My smile shows signs of finding amusement in the situation; however my eyes, vacant and staring straight out towards the rain sodden tarmac of the staff car park, belie the true state of my nerves.

                “Well perhaps for now if you’d like to come behind the screen I can examine how the healing process has progressed. Oh excuse me a minute.”

I allow her time to sneeze, as I wait with my pants around my ankles. I fidget with the ‘dignity paper’ making sure I’m properly covered as she splutters another cough. Finally I sit bolt up right as I hear her violently wretch on the other side of the thin curtain. Resisting the temptation to enquire as to what she may be choking on, I instead lie back and try to remain calm. She tries to help this process, by telling me to remain calm. In fact, I’m relieved to hear her praise my penis, or is it her own work?

                “Oh yes, that’s lovely.”

                “Thank you.”

We sit back down at her desk and she begins to explain the same thing she explained when I sat down at her desk the last time I was here; that we could use creams, or do a bi-opsy if the sample from the last one isn’t found.

                “Would you like the creams?”

                “Well why bother if we still aren’t sure of the problem? That was the whole point of the excruciating pain you put me through right?”

                “Well exactly I understand your point which is why maybe you’d like to take the creams?”

                “Isn’t that the exact opposite of my point doctor?”

The phone rings. She mutters a few words down the line before turning to me.

                “They’ve found the sample!”

                “Great, how was it?”

                “They didn’t say. So if you’d like to make an appointment for next week on your way out, I’ll see you then.”

The Clinic 3: Make do and Mend

I’m pretty well accustomed to all this by now. I approach the waiting room anticipating which copy of National Geographic I shall use to distract my mind from that which lies in wait. Though that isn’t too difficult as I’m really not sure exactly what is going to happen once I’ve joined the good doctor and her chuckling side-kicks. Perhaps I’ll be treated to blow-ups of the portrait photos taken on my last visit. That in mind I begin to flick through pictures of fungus forests and dolphins riddled with scar-tissue, best to ready myself.

Today the doctor herself comes to call me into her consultation room. She mumbles my name and I follow her down the same old new corridors without a word. My mind casts back to my first visit and her refusal to make eye contact, however what with me walking a pace or two behind her strident march I can forgive her this time, until she asks me to take a seat and I do so obligingly; my head is firmly behind her computer screen. She begins to talk through what stage we’re currently at, however addressing my knees isn’t getting the message across and so I poke my head round the screen and into view in order to ask a question which has been on my mind over the last few days between appointments.

                “So am I not going to be able to have sex for a while?”

                “Oh no! Of course not! I thought you would know that!”

Suddenly she’s making eye contact. Three weeks ago sex was truly a taboo subject for this GUM clinic doctor, however she’s all too happy to be informing me of my enforced abstinence over the coming weeks.

                “Oh no. They’ll be no sex for a few weeks for you.” And then on remembering our previous conversations; “Of any kind.”

                “Right. But you’re sure the Bi-opsy is absolutely necessary?”

                “Well I think I might know what you’re suffering from. I forgot about it last time,”

                “You forgot?”

“Yes I didn’t think of it but I think I know what it is now.”

I’m inclined to assume she put the photos up on Flickr and someone chirped up with a likely diagnosis.

                “So what exactly does it involve, this bi-opsy, how is the anesthetic administered?”

                “With a needle.”

                “Down the urethra?”

                “No. What we will do is we will inject it into the end of the err, of the penis, then we will cut a piece out and send it away to test it.”

                “An IQ test?”

                “…”

                “Is it going to hurt?”

“Yes. But still I think we should go ahead with the Bi-opsy because then we can eliminate more serious things like cancer.”

                “Cancer?”

                “Right exactly. The problem right now though is that we are just waiting for the right equipment. Some of the things we need are missing from the kit you see. Would you like to go back to the waiting room and I’ll come and call you again?”

                “What so I can go sit on my own and think about cancer for a bit?”

                “Oh actually maybe I can call the nurse. Oh look here she is. Have we got it? OK good let’s get started.”

                “!?!”

So I’m pulling my pants down for this woman for the third time in as many weeks. Pleasingly there’s still no blood on the new room’s ceiling, however I feel there will be very soon as she begins to violently clean the infected area. Having trouble with the gloves the doctor takes time to explain everything;

                “OK I’m just putting some gloves on, OK no, they’re inside out, I shall need some other ones, I won’t touch the other side though. OK there we go. Now where’s that needle?”

                “Erm I think that’s the wrong one doctor!”

                “Oh yes, so it is, thank you nurse.”

                “Yeah, thank you nurse!?!”

Then I’m in more pain than I’m ever likely to feel unless I come back as a sea horse, excruciating. The nurse thankfully is the reassuring sort. I like a Scottish accent.

                “Try to concentrate on your breathing lovey, that’s it. In….and out…”

I’ve never been so grateful of someone explaining the finer points of taking a breath to me. She compares the feeling to child birth. Like I said; she’s the kind, reassuring, lying type.  

                “Is that it?!”

                “Well I’m afraid I’m going to have to do that again as I hit a blood vessel. Do you know nurse he wasn’t going to have the bi-opsy when he found out he couldn’t have sex?”

                “Well it wasn’t quite like tha…ARGH fuck!”

I’m now sure of her attitude towards copulation. And even more sure that in her mind it is merely an abstract idea, something that exists on the outskirts of society, huddling under bridges with degenerate gamblers, violent psychopaths and the boy who tried to kiss her hand without asking when she was fourteen.                

“OK, can you feel this?” I can’t. Fortunately, as she’s probably pinching it between thumb and forefinger. She continues largely uneventfully, though her phone rings half way through. The caller is informed that the doctor is busy; at this at least I manage to raise a chuckle. “Is he hysterical?” After what seems like an age of applying pressure a bandage is brought out.

                “Just a wee one.” The nurse informs me. I look down. You know those dogs that leave veterinary surgeries with plastic cones to stop themselves scratching? With forlorn puppy eyes I look to the nurse for some support. “Make do and mend.” She offers. I stand up, having left behind an almightily disgusting pool of sweat. All the swagger of my earlier appointments drained out onto the operating bed. The doctor knows it, I feel like she’s drunk up all my salty confidence.

                “So you can make an appointment for next week on your way out.”

                “So if you think you have a diagnosis, what exactly causes that?”

                “We’ll talk about that next time.”

                “Oh. OK.”

                “Goodbye, and remember; no sex, of any kind.”