Piling On The Agony

PILING ON THE AGONY by Neil McCall

Tuesday 13th January 2004: I'm off work today and I think I'll spend
the time writing a diary; it won't compare to the work of the
incomparable Sooz of course, thankfully. But it might raise a few
chuckles.

Right, are you are sitting comfortably? Then I'll begin. No, I won't,
because I'm not sitting comfortably at the moment! Wriggle of bum
cheeks. Ah, that's a bit better.

Oh, it's not what you think, that I ought to find myself a gentler
dominatrix. No, this is internal; the dreaded haemorrhoids. Like the
hero that I am, I've bravely borne my long illness for a week or two.
Until I got constipated yesterday, and then, wow, it was agony!
Limping. Real blood! It was time I went to see the GP.

Amazingly I got an early appointment with the doctor and, more
amazingly, I'd been allocated to a female Indian doctor who was on some
kind of placement; she didn't even have a proper printed name card on
the board, just her name scrawled in black felt-tip on the back of
someone else's. Even more amazingly still, the last time I'd been
stricken with piles which wouldn't go away I'd seen a young female
Indian locum doctor; we don't even have any Indian doctors in the
practice, a large group practice in South Manchester. That had been a
not unpleasant visit, as her slender girlish fingers gently probed my
sore anus. But this time was no repetition; the doctor was larger,
older and married and as she unceremoniously thrust her gloved digit up
my rear end, I gave an agonised yell which the whole practice must have
heard. Yes, the little sods were definitely hiding away up there, and,
after ascertaining that I wasn't suffering weight loss or other bowel
problems, she sent me to the chemist. On the way out I told her briefly
about my tendency to expose my bumhole solely to Asian ladies, and she
smiled.

"Luck of the draw," she said.

I then recounted this to my son who's off-duty today. He had a bad
attack of the piles last year at the tender age of nineteen, and the
doctor (female, again) had asked whether there was a family history;
this is distinctly possible, but the trouble is, it's hardly the thing
my dad would have confessed to (and he certainly wouldn't have posted
it here for all to read!). The poor lad had also felt he had to
reassure her that he wasn't gay, despite having just visited
California. He then went back to playing "Badge Of Honour"
interactively on the PC, a game in which he became a Nazi character
defending Omaha beach. With macabre Mancunian humour, he named his
gun-toting Swastika-laden character in the game "Harold Shipman", a GP
you definitely didn't want to visit, as it turned out (We both found
out later that day that he'd just committed suicide). Sometimes I worry
about that boy.

I'm not gay either, so I'm not deliriously happy about squirting creams
up my bum, but needs must. At some time in my life (and I'm definitely
in the latter half now) I'll probably need my prostate checking, and
what that involves was once described unforgettably by Billy Connolly.
Sometimes I worry about me too.