Sat Night A&E

I never liked going to the doctors, and less so, hospitals. Somehow the whole idea of being sick was never quite appealing. I also never was the pill-popping type, enduring headaches to the point to throb before taking white, god-sent pills of pain relief, contextually of course. Painkillers don't go to the source of the problem but numb the whole body when the whole body doesn't need the attention. So that bothers me. Tonight however the situation was different. I started having my strange chest pains on the right side once again, after a heavy meal on Friday night. The next day, the pain was still there. It sort of dulls when I just breathe, hurts way more when I laugh, get out of bed, or carry the 2-yr old monster of a nephew. By 9pm yesterday, breathing was a little laboured and apparently I looked pale. My friends at dinner commented the same after a round of Taboo on Friday night. So to quash all impressions of my stubborns and to appease the increasingly worried mother, I went to Tan Tock Seng's Accident and Emergency at 11pm.

As it was a chest related matter, I was served pretty quickly. ECG, blood pressure checks and preliminary assessments done in half hour. Then I waited to see the doc. He was a very skinny young man who looked slightly malnourished. He was very nice and I applied my jovial chat skills to good use. I learned that the everyday background radiation we experience is higher than the intensity of x-rays used for radiology. He listened to my front and back, squeezed by calves to check for Deep Vein Thrombosis (he said, just to rule it out), and made me stretch out my arms. An x-ray followed then some more waiting. There was a flat panel TV perched 2 meters in the air locked on to Channel 5. There was Star Wars earlier but I missed the scene when the Death Star was blown up, and got back to watch Privileged, a strange show with pretty Californians.

Called in some time later, the doctor told me, get this, the x-ray of my lungs was "pristine". His words, not mine. So in the end, he prescribed 40 pills of Anarex and wished me good luck, just as I had wished him when he took his strange assessment of Gurmit Singh Kullar to his senior doctor for a confirmed opinion and approach to this pain problem at hand.

That's it. Another receipt to claim on Monday and more pills to take, more fingers to cross. I was a little upset that I now am now in the hospital records. Like being tracked on the grid.