Showing posts with label medical. Show all posts
Showing posts with label medical. Show all posts

Thursday, 4 December 2008

How to Annoy Medical Personnel, Waiting, and No Smoke Without Fire.

How to annoy Medical Personnel

1)When getting blood results back, ask for the actual results not the doctors interpretations of them.
2)Inform the doctor that the slight elevation they believe exists is in your opinion within normal parameters, and is not significant enough to require a repeat of the same test a week later.
3)Refuse to attend an additional check up
4)Repeat when pregnant
5)Insist that the hospital doctors etc only speak to your partner and have them follow steps 1-3.


Waiting

Waiting for the baby to be born is very like waiting for a train to arrive while carrying a heavy bag. You don’t want to put the bag down if you are going to step on the train in a moment, but if its going to be a while you would like to go and get a coffee and a paper. Uncertain of whether it will arrive on time, early, or late, you find yourself standing paralysed on the platform, aware that in the time you have spent making the decision as to whether to get coffee you could have actually got it, and arrived back, but that now you are not sure if this will repeat itself or whether you really still do have time for coffee.

Of course, this is a bad analogy as I am eating antacids which I am washing down with coffee and there is nothing I have to actually put off, however the sense of uncertain anticipation is really exquisitely unpleasant. I know, I know, I should be going "yippy oh its all exciting", but I am so, so bored. You have read me whinging about this once already – you will, I know, be bored by this second blog on the same topic. Well, that’s how I feel, only more.

I don’t queue. I don’t wait. If people are late for a meeting I leave. If I am early for a meeting and would need to wait I will leave 8/10 times. I rarely meet people. I don’t do waiting.

I am so, so, so annoyed and cross and fed up and want to cry.

In case it isn’t clear – I have given up smoking. Not that it's having any affect on my mood. At all. ‘They’ say "no smoke without fire" – at last I understand. Not smoking makes you want to shoot people. No smoke – you want to fire a gun. This morning someone said ‘how are you?’ to me – foolish foolish reckless person…..

Yours as impatiently,

The Broken Man

Tuesday, 2 December 2008

Panic, Post boxes and Re-adjusting my life

The long-suffering wife's hands and feet were itching yesterday. Big time. In an attempt to keep everything in the highest level of panic possible we refered to the medical books and diagnosed obstetric cholostatis, and the need for an induction. This resulted in a rush to hospital for a blood test, the result of which arrived a very leisurely 8 hours later. Hospitals are among the dullest places in the world. Blood tests seem okay; panic over.

With time to kill the wife dropped the bomb shell. She doesn’t want me to talk about post-boxes with our baby. Ever. She is somewhat concerned that I will explain why I don’t “do” postboxes and that this will be adopted by our child. Let me explain – first of all post boxes in England are red. They sit on the corner of roads, and are locked. Big red metal locked boxes. Into these boxes, people put cards, letters, cheques, communications, thoughts. Around collection time the metal box is full of thoughts, of half conversations, all just sitting there waiting. I don’t understand how someone can walk past one and not feel a little uneasy. The thought of metal red boxes, safes for people's ideas and hopes and dreams and fears – and gas bills, just sitting around innocently is a very odd thing. I feel a sense of awe to see people just walk past them as if it wasn’t strange. The thought of putting my thoughts in one, even protected by an envelope, of letting it sit there in the jumble of other people's ideas, is just to much for me.

Along with the fast approaching birth of our child is, of course, New Years Eve. More to the point, there is party on, an event, oh what an event, a London bash which makes me want to cry with joy, an invitation to a night of excess. So I think to myself – "why not go, it will be great." Okay I confess I won't be able to take the wife and baby – but I am sure she won't mind me going... and then I pause and I know she will, I know she will mind a lot and with that realisation I am deeply aware that a part of my life has ended as surely as another one is beginning.

Yours as ever

The Broken Man

Friday, 1 August 2008

Baby Scan




We have just had a baby scan. I know what I am meant to say here. I know the rules of this game, and I know there are some women reading this, and I don’t want to get in trouble so..

"WOW its just so incredible to see my baby! I can't begin to tell you how exciting it was to see my baby…" Okay, you can stop reading now. Leave it right there and everyone will be happy.

The first scan was incredibly exciting, and was really clear, and I did feel all those incredible emotions. The second one was a few weeks later, and wasn’t such a big deal as we had been for the emergency scan already, and in honesty the second scan wasn’t as clear as the first one.

This one – well to be honest there was lots of searching around and “we” had decided not to find out the baby's gender (I am sure I have talked about that so won't go on about it again). So for me, as that was something they could look for and were not, its like being told; "here is something really exciting (okay, okay, someone) but you don’t get to know the exciting bit yet – the surprise bit – and you don’t get to play with it yet." Please don’t hate me – I was bored.

It's not that I am not excited about having a baby, I really, really am. It's just that, well, an odd medical image which looks like an x-ray on a monitor just didn’t make my heart flutter. I know I should have been wiping a tear away from my eye, but in all honesty I was fighting the urge to pick up my book. Okay, this makes me a terrible person, I know that, I suspect particuarly mothers, expectant and those already with children will be thinking; “OH, he is one of those men”, but I thought it worth posting the unvarnished truth, as I have a suspicion (okay, a hope) that I am not alone in this...

Yours as ever,

The Broken Man