Pop a pill and sleep - a perfect remedy

I AM not a hypochondriac. I hardly ever go to the doctors, in fact I’m the opposite of a hypochondriac. I’m a hypochondriasis.

I never think I’m ill, even when my eyeballs are bleeding and one leg is hanging on by a simple thread, I still refuse a doctors appointment and take a few paracetamol with the words “a few hours sleep will sort me out.”

So it was with a heavy heart that I asked my husband to make me an appointment to see my GP.

Now, because I never ever go to the doctor, I had stored up quite a lot of ailments needing to be given the once over.

And once I started making a list, the more the ailments appeared.

First off there was this sore throat I’d had for a couple of days. It was inflamed and I had a bit of a cough, not that it was swine flu or anything, I had none of the horrible symptoms; high fever, vomiting, diarrhoea and all that jazz, no it was just a simple sore throat.

Then there was that mole that has been growing larger. When I backpacked solo around Oz in my youth — I’ll tell you all about it another day — I burned my chest so horrifically that an ambulance was called round to administer some tuts and patronising looks.

A few days after that soul-destroying experience, I pulled a complete second skin from my nose to my belly button. It was like shedding off the old me and embracing the new.

The new me went off sunbathing again and so the cycle repeated until I went to Melbourne and it started to rain. This mole has been growing ever since.

Then there was the tingling sensation in my right arm. I could be over doing things at the gym but while self-diagnosing on the internet, I realised I had only a few days to live and popped out to the sales. Oddly my husband wasn’t very sympathetic.

So in the end I went to the doctors and he sent me packing with a “Take a few paracetamol and get yourself some sleep.”

There we go, what did I say, fit as a fiddle. I bid him farewell, looked once around the surgery and left, knowing that it would be a very long time before I would see that place again.