Dreadful Nonsense

I went to see my trusty GP this morning as part of my ongoing campaign to possibly get a job, and maybe kick start myself back into some kind of adult lifestyle, rather than this flippant routine I'm currently in of lying around watching Will & Grace and ER repeats all day. My trusty GP, however, was not in residence today, and I instead got to meet and greet with the crazy man who set up the medical practice about 20 years ago.

I love old gentlemen doctors. Old gentlemen doctors are the best kind of doctors, and indeed the best kind of old gentlemen, ever to walk this earth. They're all so understanding and polite and informative and slightly patronising, but in a lovely way. I do enjoy a meet and greet with them, so long as nobody starts talking about my reproductive system or any other business of a personal nature.

So I was quite surprised when, halfway through a conversation about something almost entirely unrelated, he started to lecture me, in my position as a "lady of childbearing age" (I want my date of birth on all forms of identification to be replaced with that phrase, and when I reach menopause I want the word BARREN stamped across it in red ink) on the importance of the regular intake of folic acid.

Now, I'm a lady. We all know this. I'm also a lady of childbearing age, which most of you may have also realised. As a lady, and one who is technically if not emotionally or mentally capable of bearing children, I'm already fully aware of the importance of folic acid in relation to the making of babies. I've watched soap operas, read trashy novels, and been witness to some of the more disturbing output on the Discovery Channel, and so I know that folic acid is good and proper, and that you can find it in both broccoli and (for some reason known only to Kelloggs) Rice Krispies.

The old gentleman doctor, though, must have just read about this new invention and decided to bother all ladies of all childbearing ages with this new information. The weirdest thing about it was the statistics he kept spewing out, as if mentioning numbers in the middle of sentences would make a difference on how affected I would be by his manly speech making. He used the phrase "spina bifida" so often I'm not convinced he really knew what spina bifida was. And the clincher for me, the best part of the whole routine that I hope even now he's repeating in front of another unsuspecting lady, is the warning that if I don't take folic acid from now until the day I'm barren and useless, I MIGHT HAVE A BABY BORN WITHOUT A HEAD.

Honestly. He said that, for some poor ladies of childbearing age who haven't been responsible enough to remember to take their folic acid every day, their punishment was to give birth to babies WITHOUT HEADS. He even used a medical term for it - anacephalic - which actually means babies born without brains. Not without heads, sir. But I didn't correct him because I was too busy trying not to giggle.

This entry was posted on 12 November 2004 at 10:21 am. 0 comments

Dreadful Nonsense

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