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.”
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