I was at the clinic this morning getting various bits of me poked and prodded and spoken about and questioned until I was ready to get up, grab my new black slippers and make a mad dash for freedom. But the doctor was not only bigger and stronger than I was, but also someone I have known since I was a baby…or even before that, so being rude and unmannerly was hardly a statement of the way I was brought up or of my trust in him as a doctor. So I sat through everything, finally being jabbed by a very large and mercifully sharp needle wielded by a frighteningly young chappie who then proceeded to draw out a couple of gallons of my very dark red blood and then to compound the felony by handing me a small plastic bottle and waving me into the brightly lit bathroom. Having done the needful, I fled, shedding bottle and any vestige of the aforementioned upbringing in my wake.
So why was I undergoing this ordeal? Apart from the fact that for months – nay, perhaps even years - I have shied away from anything medical done to me, apart from a dispassionate recital of symptoms over the phone and a discreet packet of prescription meds delivered via courier to my door (which sounds amazingly like a seedy drug deal, but believe me it is far from it), I had real and good enough reasons, even from my rather biased point of view, to avoid anyone who may have been to a medical school with any positive consequences. They not only always made me feel more ill than I was at any point in time when I was constrained to see one of them, but they stuffed me full of nasty medication which compounded (he he he) the felony and made me feel even worse.
It all began a couple of weeks ago, when the world went around a little faster than it should have. Funny, I thought musingly to myself, it seems to have speeded up rather. And why is it changing direction every now and then? It wasn’t a matter of standing up too suddenly after tying my non-existent shoelaces or of bounding happily out of bed just woken from a deep sleep. It was a matter of sitting at my desk and talking on the phone and finding that my head was slowly falling off my neck. It was a matter of watching my often-irascible boss swaying gently on his rather large feet as he discussed the state of the nation, his fatherly instincts and the edit page of the newspaper with me. And it was a matter of sitting comfortably in the back seat of the car and wondering how soon we would fall off the cliff we were inching towards, backwards.
Ah, I probably was getting a cold, I told myself, and ignored it. But then the cold never arrived and the world still had a definite new spin on it. One day it got so bad that I listed seriously to starboard and had to stay home and hold on to the bookshelves and walls to navigate between feet. Rather startled – but not yet scared – I actually went to a doctor, albeit pushed squeaking, if not kicking or screaming, by a friend I like and respect, especially for her taste in lipstick and lunch. He alarmed me by making me lie down and prodding my tummy – frankly, I did not see the connection between my nicely soft middle and the state of my head, but I was not the expert. He then proceeded to talk to me about everything from the state of the newspaper to the state of the nation to the state of my emotional health to the state of my ears, reminding me somewhat of the aforementioned often-irascible boss. After a while, all of which time I was more focussed on getting back out to finish my work and go home than on what the doctor was all about, he gave me a proscription, told me I had to be a good girl and let me go.
Two days later I was truly swaying on my feet. When the dizziness faded, it would be overtaken by the cloudiness that the pills induced. As a result, I swung between a state of stupor where I felt nothing and a state of stupefied astonishment that the world should take on a whole new direction and a whole new style of movement. While I was interested in knowing more, I just wished, fervently, that it would stop and let me off.
(And then I went for a real check up, which is still in progress. But that is another story.)
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