Reasons to Feel Fortunate.

I went to the hospital for yet another procedure today. When you go to hospitals for procedures they run you through a questionnaire first, to find out whether you’re allergic to latex, have any metal parts fitted, are wearing clean socks just in case you have to take your shoes off… that sort of thing. One of the questions they routinely ask is ‘do you have any problem with your kidneys?’

Only a 50% deficiency.

‘I’m sorry?’

Well, I know it sounds like the Monty Python sketch about the man with three buttocks, but I have a 50% deficiency in the kidney department. One of your blokes cut me open and removed one of them back in March. Whether he took it home and fried it up with some onions and a dash of Tabasco sauce – and if he did, whether he ate it himself or fed it to his dog – I wouldn’t know. On the other hand he might have done neither, in which case I’m curious to know whether the poor little organ was given a proper funeral as was undoubtedly its due, but nobody ever said.

‘So you only have one kidney?’

Yes.

That conversation should have happened, but didn’t unfortunately. They didn’t ask me any questions about kidneys today so I needn’t have bothered rehearsing it. Instead they asked a very small number of questions and then got on with the uncomfortable, briefly painful, and considerably demeaning business of examining the inside of my bladder.

Have you ever seen the inside of a bladder? It’s disgusting. The veins look like those little mealworms you find under stones when the ground is damp. I suppose I should consider myself fortunate that there were no beetles, earwigs or wood lice in evidence. And the young registrar performing the procedure with all the studied indifference of a North Korean torture consultant didn’t find anything untoward either. That’s two reasons to feel fortunate.

And did you know that you don’t have to take your shoes off when they examine the inside of your bladder? That’s a pity because I’d been especially diligent in ensuring that my socks were fresh on this morning so as to avoid the shame of costing the NHS a squirt of air freshener subsequent to my departure.

Oh, and they also advised me, upon being questioned, that the CT scans I had three weeks ago (on the results of which I have been fretting less than manfully for twenty one days) also showed nothing untoward. It appears I’m as clean as I was before this whole damn business started and am quite likely to live through another winter after all. I suppose that’s three reasons to feel fortunate. There’s a possibility that I might even start blogging again before too long.

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But tonight the DVD player in my computer packed up when I still had five episodes of Father Ted to watch. Is fortune faltering, I wonder.