On Trials and TV Trivia.

Today was the occasion of my fourth cystoscopy in the space of twelve months. It appears the good doctors at the Royal Derby Hospital fear that some precocious offspring of the grade 3 cancer which was domiciled in my right kidney last year might set up home in my bladder. It happens, apparently.

It wasn’t one of my better days. Having arrived at the almighty bulk of the RDH half an hour early, I sat for 25 minutes in a queue waiting to get a space in one of their seven car parks. It meant I made my appointment time with seconds to spare, and was then kept waiting for a tedious 1¼ hours before being seen by the doctor. That’s most unusual and I did complain, but only briefly and obliquely because I still regard the NHS as a privilege, not an entitlement.

The wait was not, however, entirely without interest because the Urology Day Case waiting area is one of the few which has a TV set mounted in the corner of the room for the entertainment of the fretful rabble in the brown, fake leather seats.

First up was The Jeremy Kyle Show, which I would never watch voluntarily because every aspect of it speaks volumes for the alien world which lies gross and grovelling at the heart of popular culture. I didn’t watch it today either, but there was no escaping the sound. It confirmed my worst fears by validating the predictable fact that the human genome is remarkably close to that of the chimpanzee.

Next came a DVD tutorial on How to Wash Your Hands Properly which began with the instruction: ‘Rub your hands around the bar of soap until there’s lots of lather.’ I took careful note so that my post-operative resolution to attain enlightenment should be further augmented by finally knowing what to do with a bar of soap.

The troublesome bit was the next recorded NHS special in which patients recounted the gruesome horrors they experienced consequent upon their conditions, followed by the further gruesome horrors engendered by the relevant treatments. I think the message was meant be: Do not ignore your symptoms! But I didn’t view it that way. I saw it as all the more reason not to go running to a GP to ask ‘Doctor, doctor, I coughed twice on one day last week and I fear it may mean that I have any one or more of a dozen rare conditions, each of which is potentially fatal if I do not seek the immediate and harrowing attention of your specialist colleagues.’ Seems I’ve become scared of doctors. Can you believe that? Can you blame me?

But there was light relief to come because the TV set reverted to popular culture mode by showing one of those awful mid-morning magazine programmes in which two very nice presenters – one male and one female, of course – take an in-depth look at a matter germane to the hour. Today being Chinese New Year, they introduced a Chinese chef come to celebrate the occasion with a tutorial in his native cuisine. One of the presenters asked ‘So what does the Year of the Pig actually mean?’ to which the chef replied: ‘It will be a good year for pigs.’ Whether he was joking - with a degree of irony which I find both distasteful and yet perversely laudable - because he was about to prepare a pork dish, I mercifully never found out because rescue was at hand in the form of a very nice doctor who cordially invited me into the torture chamber.

As for the procedure itself, it was different than the previous three. It was rather more painful and I left the hospital feeling nauseous, sore, dizzy and cold. And here I am ten hours later feeling only a little recovered. That’s life I suppose, but I am beginning to wonder whether my hope of returning to the fold a fully functioning member of the species might prove to be forlorn.

And if anyone is wondering why I’ve gone twelve days without making a post, it's because my mind hasn’t been operating at a wavelength conducive to writing so I didn’t bother forcing the issue.