Carry on doctor without me

Determined not to sit in that chair where I am forced to open my mouth wide, I put off my dental visits till it got so bad that the doctor was forced to do what is known as the root canal.

He explained to me as I lay in the swivel chair with my feet way up to the ceiling and my head nearly touching the floor, what the procedure was. "It requires going inside the tooth and deadening the nerve," he said.

For some reason I am very squeamish. Not only can I not look at a syringe withdrawing blood without feeling faint, but even listening to someone describing a surgical procedure they went through is enough to send me crashing into a chair.

"We then break the bone and reset it so that it grows straight," said a doctor about how a bone deformity is set right so I started yawning and I could feel a sheen of perspiration on my brow.

Before my system goes into standby mode at these times, it is preceded by unusual sightings.

While some people see bursts of lights like shooting stars, I see big, fat, white balloons slowly floating and they hit the sides of an imaginary rectangle and dreamily bounce off to the other side.

Tonsil talk

During the second stage, the yawning intensifies and I feel like throwing up and I sweat profusely.

I have never been operated on in my life, not even to take my tonsils out. Taking tonsils out is quite common from where I come from.

"My child has been coughing for weeks now and nothing seems to work. I think it is time to take his tonsils out." So, the poor kid is put on the operating table, but he is happy as he gets to eat a lot of ice cream later.

One day I had to rush myself to an emergency clinic and the doctor took a quick look at my shin and said she had to suture the wounds.

I had done a stupid thing like taking a shortcut in Sharjah through an unpaved road and the wheels of my tiny car had got stuck in the sand.

Buckshot memories

Some kindly soul who was passing by asked me to get down and he took over the wheel and told me to push. Thinking that he is a seasoned dune basher, I did as I was told. Suddenly, the man gunned the engine and the wheels slipped and dug deeper into the sand while throwing a spray of tiny pebbles at my legs at high speed.

The pebbles tore through my jeans and my leg looked like someone had shot it with buckshot. At the hospital I looked straight at the doctor's face as she cut and sewed, trying not to see what was happening. But it didn't help as the doctor had very expressive features and winced and grimaced as she stitched me up.

Because of my fainting spells I try and put off hospital visits, as for some reason friends and relatives who have been under a knife are hell bent on explaining the finer details of what they went through.

I bring this up because it is now my job to bring to you news about the various diseases and such awful things and the work gets a little difficult when half the time you are yawning and trying not to slip away into unconsciousness.

"Are you interested in watching an open-heart surgery?" asked a doctor the other day. I looked at him incredulously and said with trepidation in my voice, "No…." He completely ignored that and went on: "The patient is awake all the time," he said. "But I won't be," I told him.