Chris Pascoe’s Fun Tales

Miraculously, Chris comes through a number of health scares unscathed...

I’ve spent quite a lot of time in our local hospital recently, which won’t surprise many readers. These trips to the hospital haven’t been due to any accidents, however, or even a desire to donate any further books with titles designed to upset patients, but rather a mix of hypochondria, health checks and heart attacks.

OK, the heart attack eventually turned out also to fit into the hypochondria bracket (as did a stroke I didn’t have a few years ago) but at the time I thought I was in big trouble.

Regular readers may remember the stroke I didn’t have turned out to be Bell’s palsy, a condition that first presents itself in a way that definitely suggests stroke!

Your face becomes temporarily paralysed on one side and you can’t speak properly.

So when I raced into A&E, approaching the first uniformed nurse I saw and frantically explaining my condition, I was a bit taken aback when she brusquely told me I’d have to drive to another hospital, half-an-hour away, because “this A&E only deals with minor things”.

So appalled was I that she thought I should go for a drive while having a stroke, I legged it to another nurse and told on her. Nurse Two looked over my shoulder at Nurse One and asked, “Why did you tell our cleaner you’re having a stroke?”

Anyway, my recent suspected heart attack was taken more seriously – at least by my GP, who sent me straight to hospital for a thorough examination.

On arrival I was ushered on to a cubicle bed where I was hooked up to a heart monitor machine, one of those with all the wavy lines scrolling across the screen to show you’re still in the land of the living.

After about five minutes, my lines became as flat as a pancake, which surprised me because by now I felt fine. Wondering if I was possibly a ghost, I hit the call button beside my bed. Two nurses raced in, tutted, and reset the machine, explaining that “it does that”.

It soon “did that” again and I lay flat-lining for the next two hours, before being given the all clear and told it was probably a bad case of wind.

Two days later I had to go in for a blood test, related to another condition I didn’t have.

This was quick and efficient, notable only for two overheard conversations; the first between an elderly man and his wife: “We’ll have to come back – they say I haven’t got any blood.”

“No blood? My sister always said you’re a strange one.”

The second was between two ladies in the queue. Presumably talking about the man in her life, one explained, “Well, my Vince has always been obese, very obese, but the thing is, obesity doesn’t define him. He defines obesity.”

I shall definitely be looking up obesity in the Oxford English Dictionary and reading exactly what they have to say about Vince…

Two nurses raced in, tutted and explained, “It does that…”

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