COLIN HOGG

AFTER CHECKING IN WITH HIMSELF, COLIN GETS A CHECK-UP

This story is called Doctor Debbie and Her Discreet Digit. I should warn you, this isn’t for the faint of heart – and especially it might not be for anyone who thinks men are more fearless than women. If, in fact, there is anyone left who thinks such a thing, apart from the occasional deluded male.

I am not one of those deluded males and I know this because I recently came close to failing the fearless test. This is a very personal story. Brace yourselves...

I’d known for a while I needed to go talk to the family doctor. Certain things just weren’t quite what they used to be. There were pains, as the songwriter Leonard Cohen once observed, in the places where I used to play. There’s a few other things too. The issues have been adding up.

So I went to the doctor with my list, having put things off for a while. I opened the door to the medical centre at the same time as my doctor opened her surgery door. She called me straight in, alarming me. I usually have to wait. I was looking forward to a bit of time in the waiting room.

“I thought I’d have some time to compose myself,” I told her.

“Don’t be silly,” she said with one of those calm smiles they must surely practise at medical school. Dr Debbie has a particularly good one. I sat down and took out my piece of paper.

“What’s first on your list?” she asked.

I’d put the more minor things at the top of my list and the trickier, down-below things – as they should be – at the bottom. “That’s not skin cancer,” she said when I showed her the funny little things on my forehead. “Just sun damage and age.”

There were a few other things, nothing major. And then, at the bottom of the list, the stuff I didn’t really want to talk about. But I did because I knew it was the right and sensible thing to do.

After all, I kept telling myself, she’s just the mechanic, you’re the car. Which is exactly how Dr Debbie behaved.

“You’re going to need an internal examination,” she said matter-of-factly after I’d told her a few things.

“When would I need to go and do that?” I asked.

“How’s right now?” she said, pointing to the examination bed. “Hop up there and adopt the foetal position.”

This was all so sudden that

I did what she told me and the next thing I knew, in the midst of a conversation about what was good on Netflix, she did what she said needed doing and pronounced me to be in perfectly fine condition.

I was so pleased to hear this I barely even noticed her peeling off her rubber glove. I’ve been through this before and the worst bit by far, for some reason, is the snap of that rubber glove. It’s the bit that really puts the fear in the fearless male.

But, really, we should get over it. I did and though I wouldn’t say I feel any closer to my doctor than I used to, I came out feeling a lot better than I did going in. Though walking a little strangely.