The Big Read: Healthy? Is that some sick joke?

10 September 2014 - 02:04 By Tom Eaton
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I know how this sounds, Doc.

I know I've made an appointment, supposedly about a specific problem, and now I'm sitting here in your consulting room saying "It's not really a pain so much as a sort of small twinge, over here," and I know that as I'm saying "here" I'm indicating my arm, shoulder, chest, stomach, hip, thigh, knee and foot. But let's get real. Twinges are how stuff starts.

Saying "It's just a small twinge" is basically the same as saying "It's just a small demand for the Sudetenland."

And just because I'm a mild hypochondriac it doesn't mean that I'm not terribly ill.

It goes without saying that I'm totally in favour of full disclosure here. I'll tell you anything you want to know. But obviously I'm not going to tell you about my internet research because we both know that online diagnoses are the refuge of the desperate and the lazy. Also my symptoms are probably so pronounced that you could diagnose me the moment I walked in. You probably saw exactly what Google told me: that I have tuberculosis-induced Ebola that has triggered late-stage cancer of the everything. Sure, the parameters of the online test were broad - "Do you sometimes feel tired? Are you a human being?" - but I answered yes to EVERY SINGLE ONE. So.

Okay, Doc. I'll lie on your examination table but I hope you've got a plastic sheet because this could get ugly very soon. What? You want me to bend my leg? My other leg? I didn't realise it had spread to both.

The ridiculous thing, Doc, is that I'm not even a real hypochondriac. But you know those people who get pulled over at a roadblock and suddenly want to confess to crimes they haven't committed? I'm one of those. And you're so calm and reassuring and just plain doctory that I'm starting to feel I owe it to you to have something terribly wrong with me, just to make my visit worth your while. Oh God, you're speaking.

"Now look," you're saying. "I'll be honest with you."

No, Doc, don't do that. Don't ever be honest with me. Tell me only sweet lies, or, if you can't do that, tell me crazy nonsense. Tell me that my knee is sore because I'm developing satyr legs that will get me a three-page spread in You magazine and a lifetime sponsorship from a leading manufacturer of goat slacks.

But you aren't going to tell me that. No, you're going to be honest and tell me something banal and awful. Well guess what? I'm not going to listen. What I don't know can't hurt me, so I'm going to run out of your office, my hands over my ears, screaming: "Not listening, not listening!", and I'm going to go straight to a tropical island where your horrible defeatist diagnosis can't reach me. And if it's true and I've only got weeks to live then I will die on my own terms, perhaps by dressing up as a giant plankton and swimming out to meet a pod of foraging whales.

Then again isn't this a bit juvenile? I came here to take responsibility for my own health. Perhaps I owe it to myself to grow up and listen. But how do people look when they get horrible news? In the old paintings they sort of swoon backwards, their forearm over their eyes, clutching at draperies and kissing Admiral Nelson. What would you do if I kissed you? Would you roll with it or stab me in the neck with a hypodermic full of hippo tranquilliser? Okay, I won't kiss you. But I also don't want to lapse into uncomprehending bargaining like that generic guy in the war movie who kneels over the exploded fragments of his buddy, cradling a bit of spleen, asking the medic over and over again: "But he's going to be okay, right, doc?" Maybe something between a swoon and a fugue state? How do modern celebrities take bad news? Nasally through a rolled-up banknote? How...oh, you're speaking again ...

"So the bottom line is ..."

This is how the world ends: Not with a bang but with me staring at a plastic model of a uterus on your windowsill.

"...this isn't really something that needs medical treatment."

Sure. Because the only treatment for what I've got it is a hazmat suit, a pneumatic hose full of Jik and a pit of lime powder.

"I mean," you say, "I could refer you to a good physio ..."

I have to admit that's a surprise. I didn't know that liquefied organs could be treated with ultrasound and stretching.

"... but otherwise you're fine."

Oh Doc. If only you knew.

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