Human

You have a vocation.

You get paid a fortune.

You get upgraded on flights. 

You play golf all the time, that's why I have to wait two days for an appointment (yes I said days not weeks - this isn't the NHS, you know).

You never get sick because you can fix yourself, or get yourself all those fancy disease-finding tests that you are too mean to book for me.

You are in the pocket of Big Pharma - more money, on top of the bazillions you already get paid. Greedy wench. 

You believe research that has been funded by the Bad Guys and give me drugs and vaccines that are going to harm me. Because you're stupid and gullible. 

You deliberately failed to realise that I had the illness that was the least likely statistically, based on my symptoms, and treated me for the one most likely. Pfff. 

You worked for twenty hours straight and then fell asleep on my pillow behind me while you examined my chest. And then continued to work for another ten hours. Disgrace.

On your first day back after 13 months off work you were unable to manage the workload of two doctors, you couldn't fix the IT system, you didn't drag your consultant back from somewhere else, and you chose to stop a drug because it was potentially harmful but you didn't tell my family not to give it. Murderer. 

You publicly advise people to avail of a potentially life-saving vaccine. I believe the vaccine harms people. I'm going to tell everyone you're a bad doctor. I'm going to persuade two of my friends to do the same. You've never been my doctor, or theirs. 

I think you might have done something wrong, so I'm going to get them to investigate you. If they find out you were right and I was wrong, you will be the one to suffer the consequences. Will I even realise that you died because of me? 

You keep complaining. Complaining about something called FEMPI, which sounds a bit like one of those handbags I have. Complaining that you don't get treated fairly. Fair? I've seen how much you get paid. It was in the paper. It must be true. 

You rush me sometimes. I don't like to be rushed. Your brow is furrowed and it's making me think I've done something wrong. I'm just scared, because the internet told me I have a fatal illness. 

You should be what I need. You should fix me. You should understand me. It is my right.

You told my mother everything was going to be okay. It wasn't. You told me my son was perfect. He isn't.

You lie. You're lying now, "to protect my identity". My ass. To cover yours. 

You look a bit uncomfortable when I tell you that I think you're great, that I couldn't bear to have anyone else as my doctor, that I trust you. You can trust me. I won't stab you in the back when things go belly-up. 

You seem genuinely pleased for me. 

You seem genuinely upset for me. 

I have protection from you. You have none from me. 

I never think about you when I don't need you. 

If I meet you socially, I think, "what can you do for me?"

I pass judgment on you. I've seen you doing it to me. 

You say you're going to leave. But sure you've only started!

You say you would advise your children not to follow in your footsteps. That's not very encouraging. 

What about me? What will I do without you? The diluted-a-million-times stuff doesn't seem to be doing the trick.


You're my doctor. 


I'm only human.

Climb Every Mountain

People I have never met were telling me to get up off my arse last week. 

For someone who is not good at taking instruction, that was hard. 

Not as hard as trying to lift 65kg of creaking bones up out of a snowdrift while skeeting sideways on gigantic skis, though. 
With non-existent abdominal muscles, a recently-injected rotator cuff tendinitis, and a big dose of Poor Me.
As well as the ignominy of seeing my nine-year-old scoot past me, snow spraying dramatically into my face as she skidded to a perfect halt at the end of the (teeny) slope, and said, "Did you fall again, Mummy?"

Once again, I am reminded of the wisdom of Homer (Simpson, not the other lad): If at first you don't succeed, give up. 
Nevertheless, she persisted.
And fell over, and fell over, and fell over. 

I could have helped myself, by taking all the advice (available in spades) and paying attention to the small details. 
Put on the boots right Day One.
Keep your knees bent (or is that straight?) Thud.
Look where you're going. Eh, duhh. Thud.
Plough. Pizza. Plough. Thud.

I may have got a bit cranky. I may not have expressed verbally how mind-blowing it was to be heading up an actual Alp, the fiery cold air in my lungs, the treetops poking out of the perfect white blanket, the wide-eyed astonishment of the young faces against the perspex of the it's-ok-it's-Swiss-so-it-must-be-safe Great Glass Elevator thingy whooshing us up and up and ear-poppingly up. 

I complained that any holiday that involved Lugging and Exhaustion and Wrecked and Worth It Though in its previews was destined to be a struggle. I whinged about the searing pain in my calves. "I thought I knew pain", I said (cos, like, cancer and that). "Torture", I said. 
But holy god it was lovely up there, snow-angelling away the muscle aches, watching the spreading joy of mastery in the quick-learning low-gravity-centred lucky sods around me. 

We returned the Calf-Torture Devices and went back up the mountain without them for one last hurrah. Hurrah! 
We have all the gear now, and we know all the tricks, so we'll be back. (No guarantee that the bargain basement stuff we bought will survive to next year, but then again, you could say the same for me).


Thank you, Spreadsheet Man. 


A closing thought on abbreviations.
CHF = Swiss Francs
CHF = Congestive Heart Failure
A coincidence? Not when you see the prices.

Flying Solo

I'm very fond of my own company. I have never been afraid of solitude, sometimes relishing it so much that I might appear unfriendly or rude. I just really like silence and free space to think and absolute personal freedom. 

Where the diddly-feck am I going to get that then, with a husband, a job (that by its nature requires there to be another person in the room) and three needy need-sponges. 

Through a clash of scheduling there arose a situation where I went one way, my children went another, and my spouse went to a fancy restaurant with his dad. 

I travelled backroads in the dusk, roads that I have known since I was a child and yet I asked Little Miss iPhone for her assistance. She is irritatingly wrong-but-right. I listened to 76 minutes of a rugby match, got out of the car at a garage, got back in, heard the commentator lose his nut and then opened the door (thus turning off the radio) just as the ball went over the bar. (Watching that in French is wickedly sublime).

I joined a social occasion, in a place with which I am increasingly familiar and with faces that I have been looking at now for over twenty years. While the hair distribution has changed, the giggles remain the same. 

What I enjoyed most of all though was hearing new stories. 
[*Corn-alert*]  Listening to people, and finding out more about how others live their lives, is really quite enjoyable.

Yeah so I'm supposed to do that all the time at work, but that's an uneven transaction; they tell me what I need to hear in order to help them. Or I ask them questions and only listen to the answers I want to hear.*

But I've become genuinely interested in other peoples' lives. Possibly because I drone on and on about my own now, and I'm bored to tears. Or, subconsciously, maybe I'm storing up interesting stories to write about...

I probably didn't spend enough time catching up with my old buddies but, it seems, they are in it for the long haul and we will meet again soon enough (camping in the back garden guys; it's in the diary. And now the blog. Nailed on.) 
And I'll be back for the Rooibos.

Anyway, I liked being master of how late I was going to stay up and how many pints I was going to drink and what side of the bed I was going to sleep on. Just for one night though. Trusty companions have their place in the world, after all. 






*I like this from Joanna Cannon's "The Trouble with Goats and Sheep"

And I like this from the Waterboys. It's not about me, like. It's just lovely.