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 Waiting Room
Medical mishaps reported each week by our covert correspondent, Jackie Marshall, who works at the coalface of modern medicine - the waiting room at a National Health Service (NHS) clinic. (Why not catch up on Jackie's most recent trials and tribulations.)
A Jar Of Poo
October 9, 2006
Of course, we call them "clients" these days, not patients. We’ve had training. I suppose someone in government just decided that they never wanted to hear that joke about "waiting lists" and "patience" ever again. So what if the health budget goes up year-on-year? It's circular, isn't it? Without all those consultancy fees for setting up patient, sorry, client workshops, we would be facing mass middle-class redundancies. And no government wants middle-class redundancies. The middle class are the only people who vote.
Anyway, they're "clients". Not "customers". A "client", you see, uses the services of a professional. A "customer" buys twenty Marlborough and a six-pack from a shop. By calling them "clients", we are giving them respec' (because only professional people, you see, use other professionals) and the doctors respec'. The government is big on respec'. It's all part of trying to be down with the hip-hop generation.
Every business has its regular customers, of course. It's just that not many businesses have customers who turn up flourishing jam jars full of poo. Which is what I am greeted by today. Flora Jennings - eighteen stone with hair that suggests that all is not well in the hormonal department sprouting from her chin - hasn't taken the time to steam the label off her jam jar: I can see that it once contained Bonne Maman blackcurrant conserve. "I've brought my sample," she says proudly. Puts the jar down and pushes it across the desk. I fight the urge to pick up a pen and push it straight back. "So I see," I say.
She stays there, expectantly. What does she want from me? Congratulations? Well, actually, maybe she does. The contents of the jar look worthy of the Rottweilers that roam among the burnt-out cars in the housing project that makes up part of our catchment area. She must have needed a shovel. I'm only glad she didn't use a peanut butter jar.
"So..." I say. "You were asked for a sample?"
She nods. Pushes her sample toward me once again. It's one of life's injustices, but even the poo of ugly people is somehow more repellent. I see Flora once a week, and her hair, yanked into a Croydon facelift with a rubber band, has never looked washed in the three years I've worked here. There are times when I feel heartily sympathetic towards our doctors. At least there's always a counter between them and me.
"Do you have a form?"
She looks blank.
"The doctor will have given you a form. For the pathology lab."
"Oh," she says. "Oh, right. I think I've lost it. It's been a week."
"A week?"
"I don't usually eat jam," she informs me. "I had to go and buy one specially."
I don't really know what to say to this. Eventually, I splutter out: "Didn't anyone give you a sample pot?"
"I couldn't use that," she says. "It wasn't big enough."
I'm trying really hard, right now, not to think of Flora squatted over the toilet, tracksuit bottoms puddled around her meaty ankles. Why are the morbidly obese so attracted to sports gear? Why?
"Ok," I say. "Never mind. You don't need the whole thing, though. Just enough to make some slides."
I hand her one of the ziploc plastic baggies we keep under the counter. "See if you can pop it in here," I say, "and I'll see if I can get the doctor to issue another form."
I turn away to look at the appointments log to see which doctor she last saw. Dr Curtis. Ginger Doc. I've just seen his last appointment leave. I've just got time to dive onto the phone.
A shriek. My workmate Gloria, advancing toward the counter, finger waving in the air. "No!" she howls. "No, no, no, no, noooo!"
I look up. Flora has taken the lid off the jar and is in the process of tipping it into the narrow neck of the bag. The turd slides, dull and viscous, over the glass.
She looks up, looks annoyed.
"She told me to put it in the bag," she says. "What's your problem?"
Clients. Sometimes you need the patience of a saint.
(Catch up on the most recent happenings in the waiting room.)
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