It's In The Blood
Listening to: Kathleen Edwards - Voyageur (2012)
An early start to the day sees me in the hospital for my appointment with the cardiologist, and another chance to become acquainted with the excellent Dutch medical system.
The first thing you can say about Dutch hospitals is that they’re nothing like the hospitals you get in the UK. No 1950's prefabs, no cracked sinks, no filth on the floors, and no sick people lying on trolleys in reception. Dutch hospitals are clean, bright, and airy, well stocked with the latest medical gadgetry, and obviously swimming in cash.
My consultant, a man with a posh name and mannerisms to boot, is professional, short and to the point. He’s furiously writing something down as I speak, asking the occasional question with all the interest and empathy of someone filleting fish. The lack of any response is frustrating, and I take his indifference as meaning that he’s not particularly interested in my case. After all, he’s going to hear at least another ten people today with the same problems. So, I start over-egging the cake, making my symptoms just a bit more exaggerated than perhaps they are, if only to stop the man from writing and getting him off his comfy chair and take an interest.
I explain the symptoms (a crushing weight on the chest, pains in left arm, palpitations, sweating, weakness) thinking that this is the sort of thing that a cardiologist would be interested in. But no. It is only when I mention a mild history of heart complaints in the family - this is an understatement, by the way, it's practically endemic in our family - that he finally spurs into action. He picks up the heart echo I had taken earlier, studies it, then beckons me into a side room where I'm told to strip to the waist. Having done this, he pokes and prods a bit, listens with the stethoscope, all the while not saying anything. When he’s finished, I put my shirt back on and he tells me that in the absence of anything obvious (the heart echo being fine, he says) he’ll send me for a chest X-ray and a blood sample. Oh, and just to finish it off, a fitness test. I feel like telling him not to bother. I know I’m not fit, but this is all part of the process and my role in this is to do what I'm told by people who know better.
Plus, it gets me another few hours off work, so I don't complain.
I report to the X-ray department where, for the third time today I'm told to strip down to the waist. I’m ushered into a huge room with a big cement wall with a large triple glazed window at one end, behind which stand two female technicians, and a huge Heath Robinson-esque machine at the other. It’s like something out of Blake's 7. This being Holland, the technicians behind the glass window are fabulously cute, all tall and thin, clean and healthy looking, and blonde. Seeing this I do my best Johnny Weissmuller impersonation: chest out, stomach in but it’s no use: no amount of stomach sucking can make my flabby exterior appear any better. If the overhang doesn’t impress them, the hairy nipples certainly will. Not so much Johnny Weissmuller as Johnny Vegas.
In any case I’m made to pose in front of this machine, first with hands in the air, fists clenched looking like Superman taking off on his first flight (and before he lost all that weight), and then one of me hugging the machine like a soldier's wife clutching desperately onto her husband as he boards the plane for a destination and destiny that's a mystery to both. I’m not sure quite why these poses are required, but I suspect it has to do with making the time pass more quickly for the technicians. I make a mental note to check YouTube later in the week.
The fitness test the cardiologist wanted to do remains unmentioned. And as I would rather die of a heart attack than embarrassment I don't mention it either. Instead, I follow the technician to the blood lab where she deposits my blood sample (three dark-red test tubes full of the stuff) and head home by way of the hospital canteen and a coffee and a fine slice. I have to make the most of my morning off after all.
And of all the things I've had done today, the blood sample is always the one that worries me the most. Because if anything is wrong with you, it’s in the blood they find it first. An elevated white blood cell count, high cholesterol, low cholesterol, no cholesterol, high blood sugar levels, an unusual marker; the list is endless.
I’m told that if there’s anything wrong they will ring me, but I forgot to ask them when. So now a nervous few days will follow while I wait for a phone call that I fear and hope in equal measures might change my life. Thinking about this I can feel myself becoming anxious. My heart is racing. My arm is sore. There's this weight on my chest. I'm sweating.
Oh, the irony.