Blood and Urine

Warkworth is pretty well deserted at 8 am on a Monday, except for the queue outside the Diagnostic Medlab “collection centre”. They “collect” your specimens, and the report goes to your doctor. The queue this morning was considerable, all elderly gents when I arrived, standing outside in the frost awaiting whoever might arrive and open the place up. Each of us had thought we were smart to show up early. Each of us was wrong. The frosty morning was no help to those with prostate problems. Some if not most had been fasting, on instruction, and were wondering how long it would be before they got home to breakfast.

Others showed up. Some women, one arriving on her motorised module, whatever those things are called. The conversation outside in the cold was beyond belief. Opinions were traded, on everything from the government to the weather to the All Blacks to medical care these days to the state of the roads around Warkworth – and to a generally gloomy view of human prospects.

Botox is irrelevant in this company. Gravity had triumphed. So had the general failure of the education system. We crowded into the waiting room and sat there like some kind of human demolition yard. The neurones that were available were devoted to remembering where we thought we were in the queue. The wits among us made their excruciating comments, and laughed at their own witticisms. Others of us simply endured.

The waiting room was devoid of reading matter, and a notice stood on the counter to the effect that there was a yellow alert about Swine ‘Flu, and therefore we could not read the Woman’s Weekly because it could harbour bugs.

One by one we were called, to be taken into a cubicle, bled and in some cases equipped with some plastic gear and directed to the toilet.

This is pathology, to which my wife has dedicated her life for many years -- although she has always dealt more with soft tissue and bones, histo-pathology. Nevertheless, the pathologists’ reports will affect the lives of these people, in some cases deeply or terminally.

I actually don’t care, ultimately, what any of it says about me.