TRICKY WIZARDS

TRICKY WIZARDS

Over the past few years, I’ve come across all sorts of different medical treatments but I think my Cancer Wizard is trying out a new one on me. He says it is chemotherapy to attack the nasties lurking deep inside my system. Why then, do I feel like he has put my tongue in a plaster cast and cross wired all of the rest of the nerves in my body? It could be that the pills I am taking actually contain the chemo, but I wouldn’t have put it past him to ask the pharmacy to put in a little extra something for a giggle.

At my last consultation, when he gave me the prescription, he was at pains to point out that it was necessary for him to put on the form that I was overweight and he explained that he didn’t want me to be upset if I saw this comment. As he had managed to avoid using the phrase "fat bastard", this was unlikely and I was touched that he showed such concern for my feelings. In retrospect I must ask myself if he was just extending my time with him so that he could revel in the glee of his latest practical joke.

I could hardly complain. If it had been feasible I would have re run the Candid Camera classic and had all my internal organs removed just before my last operation, just to get a response out of the surgeons (and the Dutch anaesthetist who I’m still convinced gave me a fat lip). If there’s no fun in life I really can’t see any point to it and that applies just as much to the healers as the currently unhealed. Occasionally I have come across doctors who really do look miserable all of the time. Hospital administrators have so far had the good sense to keep them away from me because it would be like a meeting of matter and anti-matter. There is just no way we could coexist in the same universe, so the doctor would have to laugh or we would both cease to be.

There has been much press coverage recently about preventing the spread of infections in hospitals; a problem which has been threatening to reach epidemic proportions. Superbugs and various flesh eating horrors are proving highly resistant to the latest antibiotics, but more worryingly for the handful of miserable doctors, there is absolutely no protection against infectious laughter.