It’s irrational, I know it is, but I have such a fear of white coats that I reacted to a letter waiting for me on our return from Scotland as if it were a notification that I had some serious illness. It was an appointment for an AAA scan at the local surgery.
I partly blame my mother. A few years ago, she was reluctant to have an eye test because she was convinced Specsavers would discover she had eye cancer. We can veer toward the dramatic in our family. When we have routine tests, they’re not just tests, they’re invasive procedures which, if they don’t uncover something terminal, will cause something terminal. You know the drill – ‘They didn’t have a day’s illness until they went to hospital for a test. Three days later, they were in the ground.’ If I have a tender eye, it’s not just a tender eye, it’s a sweat bee feeding on my tears. Don’t even ask what the slightest hint of a headache is.
The other person I partly blame is the dentist who terrorised me when I was a teenager in Rothesay. He was a sadistic bastard who once slapped me just because I spit bloody saliva onto his neatly laid out tray of dental instruments. In my defence, I was woozy from being gassed and the tray, like the sink I should have spit into, was enamel. They looked similar to my discombobulated eyes.
Anyway, the AAA scan sounded exactly like the sort of thing that would uncover something not good. I didn’t even know what AAA was till I read a leaflet informing me in great detail what abdominal aortic aneurysm screening involved, and why I’d been invited. Basically, I’m now a man of a certain age and men of a certain age are four times more likely to have an abdominal aneurysm than women. Do they know how dangerous it is to supply someone like me with this level of information about potential health issues?
I told myself, or Andy did, that testing is good. Prevention being preferrable to the abdominal aorta exploding while watching Traitors on TV. I knew she was right. It didn’t help.
On the day of the screening, I felt the anxiety start to build. My mind can tell itself over and over that it’s just a test and people have all manner of tests every single day. My body sticks its fingers in its ears and sings, ‘La, la, la. I’m not listening.’
Getting stressed out about the screening added to the worry that they’d ‘find’ something. Klaxons were going off throughout my body as the numskulls raced around in a panic. Of course this internal upheaval would show up, making the screening technician see all sorts of red flags. I practiced my speech for when he informed things didn’t look great in there. ‘It’s only because of my fear of white coats. Things will return to normal after it’s over, honest.’
As we sat in the waiting room, Andy distracted me with chatter about something we’re working on. It worked, up to a point. When my name was called, my heart doing wee flutters, I decided to launch a pre-emptive strike.
‘I have a fear of white coats,’ I told the technician (even though he was in blue scrubs) as he instructed me to lie on a bed and raise my T-shirt to expose my belly. For the next few minutes, I babbled on about fainting in a Beijing hospital as a result of this phobia. That was on a tour to learn about the Chinese approach to holistic medicine. By the time it was my turn to get a taste of how they diagnosed people by, well touching their faces, I convinced myself the doctor would discover multiple health issues. He held my chin and, boom, out I went, causing absolute havoc. He was the one who diagnosed me as having a fear of white coats, so he did find something.
Then I babbled on more about my phobia not being as ridiculous as a doctor in Portugal who confessed to having one about aliens from outer space. To be fair, her admission did make me feel more relaxed. At least my phobia is reasonable.
All the time I had verbal diarrhoea, the technician made appropriate-sounding noises, but I could tell he was only half-listening while he applied gel to my belly and then ran a scanner over it as he watched, presumably, my insides on a screen.
And then it was over.
‘That’s it,’ he announced. ‘All done. Your aorta is 1.6 cm, so no need for any further tests in future.’
Under 3 cm is normal. 3 – 4.4 cm is okay but requires a follow-up scan after 12 months. 4.5 – 5.4 requires scans every 3 months. And 5.5 cm and bigger means immediate action is required.
The relief lasted until I got back to Andy in the waiting room.
1.6 cm sounds awfie narrow to me.
