Much reduced I hobbled on a walking stick into a Health Clinic in Galway city.
The Irish government will appoint a doctor for citizens who can't afford one.
The government's fine sense of the ridiculous in my case had led them to send me to a clinic owned by Denise Catherton, my old unrequited love from childhood.
They didn't make her my doctor.
That would have been too mach bathos even for the Irish government.
They had assigned me Doctor Hildegarde Baines.
The old unrequited love from childhood just owns the place where he works.
I sat in an internal waiting room beyond the public area as directed to by a curvaceously good looking minion.
The pain was general enough but focussed on my right knee which was doing a good impression of a football.
During my last visit there had been a clearly ridiculous speculation about early onset dementia and a mention of the vagus nerve to which I'd cheerily replied: "Ah vagus my anus."
I hadn't dignified the dementia notion with a reply.
But I had thought: What a terroristic name for something that amounts to little more than professorial absent mindedness. Are the doctors actually trying to scare the bejabers out of people?
The clinician for his part had not shown any signs of amusement at my vagus anus linkage.
I thought it would have been great if he'd come back with: "No, that's not where it's located."
If only we could have our druthers.
Today the pain was not my primary concern. My primary concern was : As long as I don't see Denise Catherton when I'm looking like this, everything's not so bad.
Vanity thy name is James.
I heard her before I saw her.
Breezing up the corridor.
The confident walk.
The presence.
Honest to goodness I knew it was her.
I leaned over my walking stick Snake Plisskanly and did not make eye contact.
She breezed up and down the corridor a few more times.
Her dark hair bounced a bit.
I swear she was wearing Just Musk by Lentheric.
She was going in and out of offices with folders under her arm, button holing staff, and generally being about the place.
Out of the corner of my eye I noted that she was looking rather well.
She conversed briefly with a young male doctor.
The conversation wasn't audible in spite of my best efforts.
Then she guffawed and exclaimed: "You're hopeless."
And she playfully but realistically gave him a mock kick on the bum.
I thought it was most quaint.
Another male doctor, younger still, stuck his head out of an office.
"You! Get back in there!" cried Denise, again in fine good fooling.
This was hilariously similar in my mind to the Summer of 1983 when Denise had all the boys in a spin.
I wondered briefly did she ever wear Rah Rah skirts to work.
The junior Doctor looked sheepish but steeled himself and joined Denise and the other guy in the corridor for a conference of sorts.
My face was a study.
Denise Catherton owns her own clinic, has raised a family, has been honoured by a university for scientific achievements and is said to be uniquely respected among her professional contemporaries.
Yet today she was still the tomboy Denise of my teenage years.
Here's larks thought I.
What a rum world it is.
And how refreshing.
I still kept my head down over my walking stick, to all intents and purposes wondering where the Duke of New York had stashed the American President.
Realisation struck me.
Good heavens.
She's doing all this business in the corridor just for me.
Which just goes to show, gentle travellers of the internet, that at least my ego is in better shape than my body.
