Going To The Doctor

I had an 8.30am doctor’s appointment, as I wanted to have a cholesterol, blood sugar and prostate cancer blood tests, not that the prostate cancer blood tests is a starvation blood test, but the other two are. So, I make the earliest appointment that I can so the starvation aspect of it goes on for the shortest time possible.

I get up at 6am, like I always do, and the time to leave takes the longest time to come around, but come around it does.

I decide to catch the tram, where normally I’d ride my bike, but the starvation side of it was making me feel a little wobbly, so then I was going to drive, but it was a sunny day and the thought of being chauffeured there, even if it was in a tram, with the GP, just seemed appealing.

I walked up Gertrude Street, as I walked my right headphone wasn’t working, and I just can’t abide listening to only one headphone working, I find it is a bit discombobulating, translation really fucking annoying. 

So, I was feeling irritated by the lack of food and coffee, and then I was feeling frustrated on top of that due to my non working earphone. 

I was fiddling around with the head phone all the way to the tram stop. I was turning it off and turning it on. I was picking different music just in case it was the track, really, all the way knowing, that if I had bought the headphone case, and if I put the headphones back in for a moment, that would, in fact, turn my headphone back on. But, I didn’t bring the headphone case, and so I was fiddling around with it, really in vain, hoping beyond hope something would spark it back into life, knowing full well it probably wouldn’t.

So, I am on the tram and there is the voice over. I have taken my headphones off and put them in the small pocket in my jeans. I am already feeling irritated and a bit wobbly and there is that voice over. 

“The next stop is Buttfuck Street and the doors will open on the right side of the car.”

“The next street is Jellywobbletits Street and the doors will open on the left side of the car.”

“The next street is Wereallgoingtohell Street and the doors will open on the right hand side of the car.”

Seriously, a relentless fucking voice over that was making my tune out meditative tram ride state impossible to achieve. Grrr!

So, none of this was really going well for me.

Now, in the back of my mind, as I was seriously trying to tune out to the voice over, just breathe, just breathe, just breathe, I was vaguely thinking to myself, why can’t I picture, you know, the mental mapping to the clinic? Why can’t I see where I am going in my head?

It was all more than familiar to me, of course, but somehow it just wasn’t gelling. But fuck it, I didn’t care, I was feeling crappy by this stage, as I said.

The other thing, somewhere in the back of my mind, as I continued trying to tune out to the relentless fucking voice over that just would not stop, the tram ride was taking longer than it should.

It wasn’t until I passed the end of my mate’s, Charlie and Lenny’s, street that it suddenly all came very very clear to me. 

I had made a big mistake. I was on the wrong tram. I think of the trams in my area as the 86 and the 96, I have always had a bit of a blank spot for the number 11 that runs up Brunswick Street. I'm not really sure why. I should have caught the number 11.

I was now more than a considerably big block away from where I should be. Thinking about it a little more, I was now many blocks away, across and further out, from where I should have been.

Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! I jumped to my feet. I pushed the red getting off button. I looked at my watch. It was 8.25am. I would have been right on time, as I usually am.

Then, I thought, as so many thoughts rushed through my head, there is no use getting off at the next stop in the middle of nowhere when I can see the end of the line up ahead at a major cross roads.

5 fucking minutes. I have 5 fucking minutes. I’ll catch a taxi, that would be the best thing, but is there going to be a taxi to catch, that is the question.

My mind also went back to getting on the tram, when I touched on, I noticed my Myki balance was 50c. Great! To think Sam said to me just the other day, I’ll show you how to recharge your Myki card with your phone, and I replied, “Yes, yes, another time.”

Grrrrr!

I’m standing on the corner of Blythe Street and Nicholson Street and my watch says 8.27am. Oh, shit! Shit! Shit!

Apart from anything else, I didn’t want to miss my appointment as I didn’t want to do this fucking starvation thing again.

WHERE IS A FUCKING TAXI WHEN YOU WANT ONE!!!!!!!!

Then, out of the corner of my eye, a bus came trundling down Blythe Street towards me. I look around, and by chance, I was standing at the bus stop.

“Do you go to St Georges Road,” I asked the driver.

“Yes, we do,” he says.

So, I get on thinking about my 50c Myki card balance, but tickets are two hours so it shouldn’t be a problem. As I looked down the bus at all the miserable peak hour traveller faces, I see that all the Myki card readers are showing Out of Service. Oh well there you go.

In a few short minutes we’re at St Georges Road. We’re stuck behind a long line of multiple cars turning left and we miss the first set of green lights. Then I realise we aren’t, actually at a bus stop. I look around and I can’t see a bus stop in sight. 

The light up ahead is now red. So what to do, what to do? I walk up to the driver to ask him to let me out, fully expecting him to say, “Sorry mate, I can only let you out at a bus stop." But instead, he simply opened the doors. 

"Thanks," I say.

I run to St Georges Road, dashing across the road to the middle where the tram stop is, at the same time the bus I was on swishes along Blythe Street and off into the distance, who knows where it was actually going to stop next.

There are bikes everywhere on the bike track running down the middle of St Georges Road all waiting for their light to turn green so they can shoot off.

Momentarily, I couldn’t see the tram stop, but then I did, kind of over to the side, and I march off over to it. I can see a tram coming in the distance. Oh, I could finally exhale.

My phone says 8.35am.

My phone rings. It is the clinic. At this point, as if to be really fucking annoying, just for the sake of being annoying, my damn headphones take the call. I hit the button to bring the call back to my phone, but we get cut off. I call them back. “Sorry I am late, I will be there in 5 minutes.” 

“Okay. Good. We’ll see you then.”

The tram is full of school kids who get on and off at the next stops all the way down St Georges Road. Until, they all finally empty out, and we can all breathe again in the relative quiet of the nearly empty car.

I get off at the next stop. I run up the street.

I get to reception at 8.40am. The receptionist tells me, “As your appointment is nearly over the doctor may only be able to see you for 5 minutes. Please take a seat in the waiting room.”

Sam had been at the doctor the day before, and the doctor he was seeing kept him waiting ¾ hour in the waiting room. I am very tempted to bring this up. I think of that Seinfeld episode about this very thing. I don’t say anything. I head to the waiting room. My arse had literally just made contact with the waiting room seat when the doctor came out and said my name.