Medical Terror

Doctors are universally terrifying.

It’s nothing to do with them as people.  It’s not about how nice they are, how kind they are, how gentle or learned.  It’s simply that if you’re at the doctor’s, there’s this overwhelming sense that something’s gone wrong, but you’re not sure what.

Take, for example, my trip to ENT.  I have tinnitus in my right ear; not particularly badly, just a constant hiss, like the sound of a small trapped snake, which is itself infinitely better than a whine.  When I first when to my GP, he looked at my ear and said, “ah yes, there seems to be a concave quality to your eardrum.  I think you have a blocked eustachion tube.  Give it a week!”  (Give it a week is something very commonly said by GPs, regardless of your situation.)

One week later, I went back, for now my ear both hissed and hurt.  “Okay,” he said, “Let’s try you on a nasal spray to unclog your eustachion tube.”  So a nasal spray I tried and one week, and a massive nose-bleed later, my ear was indeed much better.

Then the hissing started again.  This time, I was referred to a consultant at Barts Hospital.

“Your hearing test is fine, the pressure behind your ear is fine.  There’s nothing we can do.”

“What, nothing?”

A brisk shrug from a brisk man.  “There’s two kinds of tinnitus.  There’s the inexplicable kind which you’ve got to learn to manage, or there’s the kind caused by small tumors pressing on the inner eardrum.  We’re going to give you an MRI in case it’s tumors, but personally I doubt it.”

And right there, the terror.

“Tumors?”

“Unlikely benign tumors,” he corrected.

“MRI?”

“For the unlikely benign tumors.”

“Tumors?!”

It has to be said, in my defense, I wasn’t actually saying this part out loud.  But my god I was thinking it.  I suppose I should also add that I’d had a stinker of a cold not three days before and to this day, I suspect that kinda threw off the very brisk consultant’s very brisk diagnostic tests.

“Hence the MRI,” he explained.  “Now… do you have anything metal in your body?”

“No,” I said, and at once, questioned this statement.  Did I?  I don’t think so.  I don’t remember anything metal being put into me.  I don’t think I’ve had any surgery or piercings or insertions or anything like that.  I have no reason to believe that I have anything metal inside me but what if I’m wrong?  What if something was implanted when I was a baby, what if I swallowed 20p when I was 3 and it never came out, what if I get into the MRI scanner and a piece of tin comes flying out of my body from god knows what source what if… what if oh god…?

“But dear,” said my Mum, “I don’t think you have any metal in your body.”

“Neither do I.  I don’t think I have tumors either.  But what if?!”

As I write this, I still have a week and a bit to go before the MRI, and my worry is now merely a gentle background hum.  Not least, since then, I’ve actually acquired a very mild eye infection in my right eye which is currently far more interesting.  As it didn’t hurt, and wasn’t red, and my vision seemed okay, I went onto NHS direct and looked up my symptoms.  ‘This symptom is manageable at home,’ it explained and oddly, I felt a pang of disappointment.  ‘Go to your local pharmacist for medication.’

You mean… I don’t need a doctor?  But my right eye is oozing!  Surely I need a doctor?  I’m a lighting designer – I need my eyes!

‘Go to your pharmacist,’ it said, ‘you have a mild eye infection, easily treatable with over-the-counter medication,’ and the thought suddenly struck me: that for all I am absolutely terrified of doctors and hospitals, of tests and machines, of diagnoses I don’t want to receive and of people stabbing, prodding and poking me with not necessarily very satisfactory answers, what I’m frightened of even more than that, and let’s face it my fears are diverse and expansive, but what I’m really, really terrified of, is of having no cure or answer at all.