On being wait listed…

CHRIS BENNETT has recently had a three-chamber pacemaker fitted. He reports from the panelbeaters.

ALL things medical start with the waiting room. This may resemble the assembly hall of the people at the Pushkin Station on the Leningrad underground in about 1957, reminiscent of the Port Shepstone hospital waiting room today, or it maybe be wood-panelled and discreet. The nurses curtsy.

After a period spent reading a dog-eared three-year-old magazine I am ushered into a cubicle - through a door with a handle that has clearly been designed to be operated by the knee.

I am now in a telephone kiosk. But there is no telephone. Panic rises. A small folding chair, upholstered in hideous blue plastic, stands belligerently against the wall. I am facing a grey plastic concertina door of the sort that seemed a good idea at the time, but they never quite got the design right.

On the chair is a piece of folded synthetic stuff. Like cotton, but not cotton. A voice without tells me to undress and put on the gown. The humiliation is now complete. Or so I think.

The gown? My mind, also rather antique, conjures up names. Balenciaga; Worth; Lanvin; Coco Chanel (“If you dress shabbily they will notice the clothes; if you dress beautifully they will notice the woman”).

You know the sort of thing.

I undress, only to find that the cubicle has been designed in such a way that it is not possible to lift both elbows, like chicken wings, simultaneously. The panic that has made itself comfortable in some little corner of my mind precludes the simple trick of standing on one leg. Good manners will not allow me to put my foot on the chair to remove a shoe. So I bang my head on the concertina door, which promptly threatens to collapse and expose me to all and sundry as an utter clown. I develop a purple face while trying to undo my shoe.

There is only one thing for it. Have a heart attack. The form I’d had to fill in suddenly makes sense.

But back to the gown. Or should I say back to front to the gown. You see, the gown is worn back to front. I am putting my arms through the sleeves wondering how it is that people are employed somewhere on this planet, in a country like Croatia or Belarus, to actually sit down and design the ‘gown’. The ‘gown’ is secured by two flimsy tapes that are to be tied in a neat bow behind my back. By me.

I beg my pardon? Have you ever tried tying a bow - or anything else, come to that, behind your back? I didn't think so. By now I can hear the hoots of laughter from the snow-capped fiords. Now about the two flimsy tapes. There is, naturally, one missing. Now would be a good time to have another heart attack.

I am summed to beyond the concertina. I am led like a bewildered child to what appears to be a stainless steel wall, against which I stand as if awaiting execution by firing squad. A folded blanket is wedged behind my head, obviously to catch the blood and save all that messy cleaning up afterwards. At this point the whole world revolves though an arc of forty-five degrees and I am now lying flat on my back. After a few clicks and whirrs and a bang I am told to get up and go back to the cubicle. A bit of an anti-climax, really.

And so I face the world armed with snapshots of the stony road that is my innards; more especially my lungs and surrounding paraphernalia. On the light box I peer at what look like photos from a satellite of the Mekong Delta; or maybe the Rann of Kutchchh. I think they look more like the latter.

Besides, I prefer the spelling.

CB

5/3/10