A not to be taken at all too seriously account of a hospital appointment


The Appointment

My doctor had made the appointment for me, "I think you should go to see a cardiologist," he had said "strictly as a precaution to find out why you are feeling so sluggish".

Well, you can imagine how I felt especially after he asked me if I had any pains in the chest, I said "no" but of course his asking me the question put it straight into my sub conscience as a fact.

So for the intervening week I was waiting to see the heart specialist I had severe pains in my chest and in both of my arms and I think it was somewhere around this time I decided I had better ring up my solicitor to make a will in case I popped my clogs sooner rather than later.

The day of the appointment eventually came and it was blowing a gale with rain promised in the next few hours and I had a thirty miles drive to a Hospital I did not know the where about of, in a place called ARGENTAN.


So I set off with ample time to spare just in case there were any road works or any other obstacles to delay me and make me late for my rendezvous' with destiny.

Each mile I travelled saw me sinking further into the bottom less pit of self-pity, with thoughts continually running through my head like "maybe if I had led a better life" and "I wonder how long he will say I have got to live." By the time I parked the car in the hospital car park I was in such a depressed state, shoulders hanging no glimmer of a smile on my face, I seriously thought of jumping in front of the next car that came along so ending my miserable existence there and then.

I summoned up the willpower to continue and found the reception area where upon being asked to state my business I said in my best casual voice "I have a 3:30 PM appointment with doctor Gee".
"Second floor the lifts are over to your right and its to the left when you come out of the lift" she managed to say to me in one quick sentence.

I plodded over to the lift and got to the second floor but went right instead of left on coming out of the lift and managed to lose myself, which only added to my now acute depression.

Eventually I found the correct door and gave the receptionist my name date of birth and every other bit of information about myself that would prove conclusively just who it was standing in front of the glass partition and had the audacity to stop their non stop chit chat of a few minutes.

All the information was punched into the computer and a sheet of paper was handed to me and I was instructed to take a seat along the corridor, probably so that they could continue and I could not over hear their mundane gossip.

I sat down and waited for fifteen minutes in which time I had well and truly stewed into an even worse state of gloominess until I was summoned from my morbid reverie by the nurse who asked me to "follow her" which of course I did reminiscent of the proverbial lamb going to its slaughter.

"Take your shirt off and doctor Gee will be with you in a few minutes" she said. True to her words the doctor did materialise in the allotted time but the look of him did nothing to lift my spirits.

Doctor Gee was a cross between a third rate actor whose name thankfully escapes me and an unmade bed, true he wore a white house coat and the obligatory stethoscope but there the similarity in comparisons to any one of the medical profession ended.

Designer stubble sported his face; either that or he had declined to shave for the last few days and bursting from the top of his white coat was a thick roll neck jumper in some strange shade of yellow that looked like it might have been purchased in a charity shop, from the thrift rail.

I lay on the bed whilst the doctor fitted more electrodes plugs and wires to me than Boris Karloff ever saw whilst making the horror movie Frankenstein.

Well I lay trying to act nonchalant and trying even harder to breath naturally while in the background machines whirled and printers issued an unending amount of continuous medical stationary showing no doubt the very time and date of my imminent demise.

"Hmmm" he said after and inordinate length of time; "Hmmm" he said again which conveyed nothing to me but the fact that he was chewing a sweet " I think we had better try you on the stress test, if you can just get on the exorcise bicycle we will get you prepared." So dutifully I sat on the bicycle while one set of wires were detached and another completely different set attached although not after parts of my delicate torso were shaved to enable a better contact.

I sat as instructed and peddled away looking out through the adjacent windows at the depressing view of the top of hospital buildings with all their air conditioning units and even further to the broken down houses with their broken and crumbling chimneys.

What a thoroughly miserable picture even the rain had started but at least the low grey clouds will obscure the disheartening landscape.

Sitting on the bicycle thinking my own morbid thoughts and trying to keep the speedometer between the required 60 km a 70 km took some doing but as instructed I kept the pace up for 20 minutes. More medical stationary being produced on a different printer but telling or confirming the same sorry tale that I dreaded to hear but had now resigned myself to hearing.

"Absolutely nothing wrong or untoward in fact quite perfect and normal results" some one was saying to me in the far off distance.

I looked away lest they see the tears of joy in my eyes and again looked out the very same window I had looked out earlier.

But this time I saw the beauty of the rooftops and though obscured a little by the glorious rain I could see past the quaint old houses with their array of lopsided chimneys to the glorious lush fields and woodland beyond.








Short story by Albert
Read 985 times
Written on 2005-12-07 at 03:15

Tags Humorous  Medical  Happiness 

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penfold18
In a word brilliant Albert I thoroughly enjoyed reading this,having had one or two scares myself,i know that wonderful feeling of euphoria you get when they say all clear,after such an awful build up by our own imagination 10 out of 10 my friend :-))
2005-12-07