In the doctor's waiting room

Upon first opening the door, the senses suggest it was a mistake. A lot of people have chosen this very day to fall ill. It might possibly have to do with Daylight Savings Time. It is spring-summer and the clocks have been moved forward. (‘Spring forward and Fall behind' is how to best remember in which season the clocks in New South Wales gain or lose an hour.)

Everybody in Sydney has lost an hour's sleep and some of us are at the doctor's. The two receptionists are smiling in an effort to keep spirits up. Even when a prospective patient at the counter says (a little too loudly) that he has overdosed on Thai cuisine the night before and his bowels are extremely unstable.

"Don't worry. Take a seat Mr X, next to the man in the checked shirt, Dr Y will see you soon."

I'm the man in the checked shirt and I am there for follow-up treatment on a lactose condition. Dairy and I are at the parting of the ways. It's taken a few years of layman investigative theorising and diagnosing to figure out that full-cream milk was never the red herring, but the culprit.

Stomach trouble

My stomach has been engaging in borborygmi, believe it or not. Yes, that's true. I didn't believe such a word existed too the first time I heard it. Apparently borborygmus, the singular form, is a kind of onomatopoeia (or words that make sounds, such as clang, bang, boom, vroom, thud and phut.)

My tummy, in plain terms, has been growling like a caged beast and, in the typical astute fashion of stomachs, it knows when to pick its moment.

"That sounded like the Queen's corgi yelping," said my humorous-bent friend Barney the last time we met.

Articles on the internet claim stomachs really don't possess a sense of sabotage. I'd like to disagree. It's my stomach after all. The doctor, a Greek, who introduced me to the word borborygmi and proudly told me of its origin (Greece!), supplied me with a dietary table of do's and don'ts.

So there I am seated calmly waiting out my appointed hour trying not to betray any emotion at the two very noisy three-year olds, who are treating the waiting room floor as an athletics track, running noisily up and down and colliding with the legs of other seated patients; I am trying particularly not to show anger at the two mothers who appear amused, even engaged and caught up, by the antics. It looks like each wants their child to win the waiting-room sprint. I'm not sure who among them is really ill, they all seem in fine fettle.

Others in the room are beginning to show interest in the toddlers' races, one lady with a Vicks inhaler halfway to her nostrils pausing to applaud the brats (and thereby lend tacit support to the general chaos. This must be the Year of Misleading Role Models, I think). The only two on my side are a pair of infants in prams who start up a collective yelling after spitting their dummies. The rest appear to have sunk into a state of apathy. Illness, granted, can be debilitating.

Into this general mellee walks the guy with the unstable tummy. Not long after he lowers himself gingerly into the seat by my side I hear a disquieting Alsatian-like growl. His stomach!

I forget everything going on around: the sprinting imps, the ones with limps, the bawling brats, the worn doormats, the fawning mothers, the sickly others. I practice a series of deep breathing and, occasionally hold my breath. Meditate, focus.

When my name is called eventually I give thanks silently.

A rare duet featuring Corgi and Alsatian has just been averted.

Kevin Martin is a journalist based in Sydney, Australia.