Jesus was a Northerner

After Mum passed away last May, I found myself not having to drive to hospitals, GPs, sundry health clinics and out of-hours’ chemists. For therapy (mine), I once blogged about a particularly frantic weekend (always a weekend), mentioning that a chemist was ‘foreign’ and I couldn’t understand her accent; we were talking about Mum’s meds so it was crucially relevant to the situation. For that I was called 'offensive'. What? How? Why? Christ knows. Actually, He probably doesn’t, poor chap. He'll be slumped on a cloud with His head in His hands, wondering when ‘Thou Shalt Not Call A Shovel A Shovel’ became the eleventh Commandment. Yup. Jesus was a Northerner.

In a way I miss all that medical stuff, despite the anxiety attacks. I loved correcting the health professionals about what was ailing Mum – and Dad before her – and what the best course of treatment was. I’m not a doctor or anything, but I did know my parents’ health histories and their little peccadillos better than anyone; that sort of knowledge is invaluable to supplement the tick-box text-book variety.

One weekend (always a weekend) when Mum was very breathy, I demanded 111 make her an emergency appointment at Stoke Mandeville, exaggerating her symptoms to get my way. When we got there, the doctor was very pleasant and thorough. She decided that the new cocktail of drugs that had been prescribed the previous week wasn’t right for Mum, but it wasn’t clear what would work better. If she increased the dose of one drug, then that would cause a complication, unless she gave her another drug, but that would mean … and so it went on. 

“If you took her off that one and reduced the dose of this one …” I proffered authoritatively.

“Maybe,” responded the doctor, in a why-didn’t-I-think-of-that kind of way. And it did work. For a while.

Therefore, it was with a sense of déjà vu that I drove Hubby to Milton Keynes recently for an eye-appointment, and to Great Missenden the next day for an unrelated minor procedure. He’s not yet at the stage (ouch that hurt) where I have to sit in on consultations with him. That thought terrifies him more than the sight of blood. One time, I sliced off the pad of my finger with a mandoline, and he was worse than useless. I did get rid of the mandoline. Well, it was easier than promising never again to make red cabbage casserole after a(?) glass of wine.

While Hubby was in the treatment room for his procedure, I was in the waiting area frantically exchanging texts with Sis, who was being a burden on the NHS. At least she’d had the good grace to collapse at the bus stop opposite a hospital, and in front of a passing off-duty paramedic. Must have saved the ambulance service a pretty penny. While we were texting, she was awaiting more pain killers and the results of tests, hoping they’d arrive in that order. We wondered if her collapse was as a result of her minor op being cancelled because of the doctors’ strike. If we were against strike action and militant trade unions before, you can imagine that our language today was too eye-watering for even my most inflammatory blogs.

After a weekend (always a weekend) stay at taxpayers’ expense, she was allowed home pending the consultant’s return from his fly-fishing weekend to decide what was wrong with her, or whatever consultants do when everyone is ill. I’m relying on her BFF to fetch and carry her at the mo as I’m saving my sympathy and patience (why is Hubby laughing?) and my diary for putting up with her, I mean putting her up, depending on any convalescence required. In the meantime, I’ve emailed her a whole host of questions to ask the doctors about alternative procedures and drug regimes.

Feeling left out, I decided to come down with something as well. No idea what it was, where it came from or how it went away. I wouldn’t be surprised if my psyche simply needed some time-out, and sympathy and patience that I didn’t get from Hubby. I had a temperature for one day, slept on-and-off for two, had a headache for three and a tummy-ache for four. Then I was fighting fit again. Weird. At least I got better before being tempted to bother the GP. The last time I didn’t want to bother the GP because it was probably nothing, ‘it’ ended up being something, and I had my shoulder bionic-ed. Luckily, that op has been 100% successful, but I might have ended up with a permanently buggered shoulder had I not gone to the doctor when I did.

Before that, I had persistent back trouble. The chiropractor managed to sort me out time after time, but Hubby got antsy and packed me off for an MRI and an ultrasound to see if there was anything else going on. 

During the ultrasound, which lasted for far too long considering I’d been ordered to drink a litre of water beforehand, the nurse(?) said, “Did you know you have a cyst on your liver?”

“Have I really?” I asked with tears in my eyes, thinking of all that water. “I shall name him Cyril.”

The nurse played along: “How do you know it’s a male cyst?” she asked.

“Because it’s probably going to be a pain,” I responded wittily, thinking on my feet, or rather, on my back. 

(I never learn. A few months before this ultrasound, I’d had a ‘nasty’ cut out of my arm. While the doctor was wielding the scalpel, I made her laugh, her hand shook and I have an ugly scar as a reminder.)

“Not at all,” the nurse continued. “It’s … I mean … he’s benign. A lot of people have liver cysts and don’t know they have them until they’re picked up by an ultrasound for something else. You can still enjoy the odd glass of wine,” she added, thinking she was being reassuring.

“By ‘odd’,” I said, “you do mean an odd number like three, or five, or …”

“We’re done here,” she giggled. “You can go.”

I did leave. Rather hurriedly. After which, I drove straight home for a glass of wine to wet Cyril’s head.

My back got better on its own, by the way. My working hypothesis is that my buggered shoulder prompted my upper back to reposition itself to try and protect the injury, which twisted my lower back out of kilter, and ‘things’ kept irritating a nerve. These irritating ‘things’ were obviously male.

Other than shoulder, back and that mystery lurgi, in the past 18 months or so I’ve had two bouts of Covid, four or five hissy fits, three weight gains, three weight losses, another weight gain and half-a-dozen crash courses in self-preservation. 

As I said in a previous blog (here) I’m indestructible, because Jesus is a Northerner and looks after his own, and that incudes Sis.