Sick as a pig

I think it is safe to say this whatever-it-is has got worse, and also, yesterday's emergency appointment ranks third in my list of worst GP appointments ever.  The gold medal must go to Dr Pal back over 10 years ago when, on viewing the malignant melanoma on my arm he told me to come back when it was the size of a penny piece, thereby allowing it time to develop to intermediary stage. Dr Pal also takes the silver for applying a live fecking flame to my nipple in order to remove a skin tag, though I freely accept my minor Darwin award for letting him do it. But for the bronze, the doctor I met yesterday must be a strong contender. She asked me for my symptoms and I told her. As soon as I mentioned the rise of unpleasant phlegm she stopped me; 'I don't even want to go there,' she said. I was puzzled. Phlegm isn't nice, but I would imagine that if anyone could face mention of the stuff with equanimity that person would be a doctor. I mentioned that when the coughing starts, there's really intense itching in my neck,my lower face, my chest. She confessed that she had no idea what that could be.  ' Maybe your body is just producing hystamine,' she offered, with a kind of helpless disgust, as though she had caught me in the act of transforming into a gigantic bee. 'Turn your face to one side so you don't breathe germs on me,' she said. She took my temperature, stuck something in my ears, told me that if the antibiotics I am taking don't work it must be a virus and she can't help.

On monday I will go see my regular doctor. I know I am fortunate to live somewhere where I don't get to pay for this kind of thing. In the meantime, I have missed parties, exhibitions, bonfire night and my work is pretty much at a standstill. This leaves me in the passive position of reading, which of course I love; but it is hard to just relax into fantasy research when Britain 2016 has become an island of the surreal. I would like to be able to use aspects of it and indeed still might. Once I have stopped hacking like an octogenarian with a 50- a-day habit.