I found myself on my back, trousers and pants around my ankles, and with a woman applying KY jelly to my nether region. We had not been properly introduced. The encounter was the culmination of various tests to see what had been causing discomfort in my groin. The investigative adventures had included the GP sticking his finger up my bum (‘Oh, the indignity of it…’ I heard myself say aloud). Now, and as a last resort, I was in the ultrasound clinic of St Thomas’. A nurse (was she? They seem to have so many variations of helpmates these days – she may even have been a teaching-assistant or ‘community warden’ having taken a wrong turning on the way to work) asked me to lie on the couch and remove my trousers and pants and that ‘the doctor will be along later’. I declined. I saw no reason to lie half naked with the family jewels on display in the middle of some gloomy room awaiting a mere medic's good – and indeterminate – pleasure.
This ‘attitude’ must have been communicated, for the medic arrived with her own attitude. We both got off to a grumpy start. But she saw the humour in my reserve and scepticism about medical self-importance and I responded well to her own dry humour and we parted on good terms, with me thanking her for humanising what had been, until then, an engagement with St Thomas’ which cast me firmly in the role of a health ‘unit’ being processed by various hapless and charmless functionaries. She had redeemed the experience. I was grateful.
This ‘attitude’ must have been communicated, for the medic arrived with her own attitude. We both got off to a grumpy start. But she saw the humour in my reserve and scepticism about medical self-importance and I responded well to her own dry humour and we parted on good terms, with me thanking her for humanising what had been, until then, an engagement with St Thomas’ which cast me firmly in the role of a health ‘unit’ being processed by various hapless and charmless functionaries. She had redeemed the experience. I was grateful.