But you both go to bed that night feeling slightly nauseous.
12
You are in the doctor’s office again, trying to distract yourself by reading your medical details on the computer screen while the doctor takes your blood pressure. He’s just weighed you to discover you’ve put on a kilo since your last visit, less than a week ago, and ten kilos in the five weeks since the accident. You tell him you haven’t been eating much and he explains that the radical change to your exercise regime may well blah blah blah blah.
You do not want to be here.
He has asked you back because he wants to discuss your blood test results. And because last time he ‘wasn’t happy’ with your blood pressure. You hate the feeling of the black armband as it inflates and constricts the blood flow around your left biceps. You are aware of your pulse beating in your temple and you’re pretty sure that all this circulatory self-consciousness is pushing your high blood pressure even higher.
Finally the good doctor exhales a long breath through his nose, removes the stethoscope from his ears and rips the black nylon band from your arm.
‘How is it?’ you ask.
‘Let’s try you lying down,’ he says, indicating the examination table behind you. You know that this means your blood pressure is high and if you were in any doubt, Doctor Wilson smiles his winning smile at you and adds, ‘Try to think of something calming.’
As he takes your blood pressure while you’re lying down, you attempt to make a shamanic journey. Once, years ago, when you were on a junket for some movie—a post-modern western—you participated in a workshop with a Native American shaman who taught you how to visualise a safe place and journey towards it until you arrived at a deep sense of peace and tranquillity.
You imagine yourself walking down a beach towards a warm rock pool filled with tropical fish. When you reach the rock pool, you discover a set of stairs leading to a mysterious underground grotto. Light refracts from the clear blue water and plays around the pale stone walls. You begin to descend. You’re about half way down when Doctor Wilson suddenly says, ‘Okey dokey,’ and packs up his equipment.
The good doctor scratches his thatch of hair and looks at you, unsmiling. This is bad because he is always smiling. He tells you that if your blood pressure remains at this level you will require medication. You’re busy processing this when he drops another bomb.
The blood tests have not revealed any specific physical reasons for your bouts of depression but there are other areas for concern. You have appeared before this man with half a leg hanging off and he hasn’t been worried so it is with some measure of alarm that you ask him what he means by ‘areas for concern’.
Your blood sugars are ‘all over the shop’ which may indicate your pancreas is producing insulin erratically which might explain your weight gain. He shows you a series of red figures on the pathology report that indicate your liver function is not within acceptable norms. He hypothesises you have had internal bleeding—causing damage to your pancreas and liver—that went undetected by the X-rays taken at the hospital.
He talks about further investigation and more tests and you know you should be asking a million questions but all you want to do is curl into a ball and disappear. You shift your attention between the three white hairs growing out of his left nostril and the uncommonly large pores in the skin on the end of his nose. You force yourself to find the pores so compelling that his words wash over you until your time is up.
Wendy is in the waiting room. She looks up from an ancient Vanity Fair with such dread that you decide to spare her the news. In the car on the way home you tell her some of the truth: the blood test revealed nothing about your depression. Wendy says she doubted it would anyway and tentatively suggests seeing a psychologist. You surprise her by
12
You are in the doctor’s office again, trying to distract yourself by reading your medical details on the computer screen while the doctor takes your blood pressure. He’s just weighed you to discover you’ve put on a kilo since your last visit, less than a week ago, and ten kilos in the five weeks since the accident. You tell him you haven’t been eating much and he explains that the radical change to your exercise regime may well blah blah blah blah.
You do not want to be here.
He has asked you back because he wants to discuss your blood test results. And because last time he ‘wasn’t happy’ with your blood pressure. You hate the feeling of the black armband as it inflates and constricts the blood flow around your left biceps. You are aware of your pulse beating in your temple and you’re pretty sure that all this circulatory self-consciousness is pushing your high blood pressure even higher.
Finally the good doctor exhales a long breath through his nose, removes the stethoscope from his ears and rips the black nylon band from your arm.
‘How is it?’ you ask.
‘Let’s try you lying down,’ he says, indicating the examination table behind you. You know that this means your blood pressure is high and if you were in any doubt, Doctor Wilson smiles his winning smile at you and adds, ‘Try to think of something calming.’
As he takes your blood pressure while you’re lying down, you attempt to make a shamanic journey. Once, years ago, when you were on a junket for some movie—a post-modern western—you participated in a workshop with a Native American shaman who taught you how to visualise a safe place and journey towards it until you arrived at a deep sense of peace and tranquillity.
You imagine yourself walking down a beach towards a warm rock pool filled with tropical fish. When you reach the rock pool, you discover a set of stairs leading to a mysterious underground grotto. Light refracts from the clear blue water and plays around the pale stone walls. You begin to descend. You’re about half way down when Doctor Wilson suddenly says, ‘Okey dokey,’ and packs up his equipment.
The good doctor scratches his thatch of hair and looks at you, unsmiling. This is bad because he is always smiling. He tells you that if your blood pressure remains at this level you will require medication. You’re busy processing this when he drops another bomb.
The blood tests have not revealed any specific physical reasons for your bouts of depression but there are other areas for concern. You have appeared before this man with half a leg hanging off and he hasn’t been worried so it is with some measure of alarm that you ask him what he means by ‘areas for concern’.
Your blood sugars are ‘all over the shop’ which may indicate your pancreas is producing insulin erratically which might explain your weight gain. He shows you a series of red figures on the pathology report that indicate your liver function is not within acceptable norms. He hypothesises you have had internal bleeding—causing damage to your pancreas and liver—that went undetected by the X-rays taken at the hospital.
He talks about further investigation and more tests and you know you should be asking a million questions but all you want to do is curl into a ball and disappear. You shift your attention between the three white hairs growing out of his left nostril and the uncommonly large pores in the skin on the end of his nose. You force yourself to find the pores so compelling that his words wash over you until your time is up.
Wendy is in the waiting room. She looks up from an ancient Vanity Fair with such dread that you decide to spare her the news. In the car on the way home you tell her some of the truth: the blood test revealed nothing about your depression. Wendy says she doubted it would anyway and tentatively suggests seeing a psychologist. You surprise her by
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