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“I have to ask, Mrs McSnelly, to rule out all possibilities.”
“I don’t want to rule things out, I want to rule things in! I want to find out what’s causing this.” I’d started to get sick of my own whiny voice, but what else could I do but complain? I was supposed to be with my friends, celebrating my birthday, but here I was doing the very opposite. And who in their right mind would let themselves get to this dilapidated state without intervention? I hung my head to my knees and then jerked upright upon seeing the purple, spider-like bulging of varicose veins around my ankles. “Argh!”
“Have you had any dizziness, or shortness of breath?”
“Well I did faint twice this morning, but that was after I looked in the mirror. And I guess I’m a bit out of breath, but I have had an awful shock.”
Dr Vischek inflated a cuff around my arm to take my blood pressure, which was normal, and took hold of my hand while a cold swab tickled my finger. Then he pressed a little stick into my fingertip. “Ouch!” A tiny blob of blood emerged and he soaked it up on some other sort of stick, then inserted it into a handheld device.
“What happened to your arm?” he asked.
The cuts from the glass had dried into raised red lines. “I knocked over a vase in the bathroom and it shattered.”
Dr Vischek eyed me curiously.
“No, I didn’t throw it, if that’s what you’re wondering. It was an accident,” I said.
The handheld device beeped and Dr Vischek looked at the screen. “Blood sugar’s normal,” he said.
Well, there goes the low blood sugar hypothesis. “Should I go to pathology and have other blood tests done?”
“You just had them done,” he replied. “Let’s see if anything’s of concern.” Dr Vischek scrolled through the screen on the device.
“You mean, one drop of blood is all you need?”
He gave a single, sharp nod and continued reading the results as I peered towards the screen, not that I understood what any of the numbers meant.
“Everything is in normal range for someone your… age, Mrs McSnelly,” Dr Vischek announced. “No sign of infection or inflammation and your cholesterol levels are good.”
“Must be those yolkless eggs, huh?” I suggested, managing a brief smile.
He performed various other tests on me and all were normal, except I failed the one where he asked me who was currently running the country. “You really don’t know?” he probed, shaking his head in apparent disbelief. That was when he decided to refer me to a neurologist and a psychiatrist.
“Shouldn’t I get an MRI first?” I asked.
The ‘V’ in Dr Vischek’s forehead deepened. “Mrs McSnelly, MRIs are no longer used. I can do a PBS now though, if you like, but it’ll be an extra charge on your account.”
“A PBS?”
“Portable Body Scan. I can check there’re no lesions on the brain or spinal cord, just for peace of mind. Or you can wait till you see the neurologist and the cost will be covered under the consultation fee.”
“I don’t care about the cost, just do whatever you can now to find out what’s going on.”
As instructed, I lay down on the examination table as Dr Vischek placed a tunnel-like frame contraption over my head and torso, and connected another handheld device to it. He stood back and pressed a remote control, and the device began moving side to side on the contraption, from my head to my waist, like a boring mini-rollercoaster without the twists, turns and loops. With all the new technology available now, if they couldn’t tell me the reason for my apparent time travel/age change scenario, then I had no idea what, or who, could.
Dr Vischek removed the contraption when the procedure was finished. He pinched the device and out popped a holographic screen, just like with the e-pad. Despite his instructions to remain lying down while he looked at the scan results, I slowly sat up. “Wow,” I whispered, admiring the three-dimensional image floating next to the stark white wall. A convoluted mass of tissue held up by a long tapered stem appeared to be staring back at Dr Vischek as he studied it, pinching sections at a time to zoom in and analyse. Noticing my amazement, he pointed to the image.
“This is your brain and spinal cord, and so far I haven’t seen anything amiss. The scan didn’t detect any focal areas of heat or increased metabolism, no clots or bleeds and no alerts have been uploaded.”
I didn’t understand what he was talking about, but it seemed safe to say I didn’t have any tumours pressing on the brain cells responsible for sense of time, or age perception – if such cells even existed.
“Your scan is perfectly healthy. And along with your other results, I can’t see any physical reason for your symptoms.”
“Are you absolutely sure?”
He nodded, helping me off the table and back to my chair. “Physically, you’re in great health. But I’ll give you a referral to a neurologist just in case and if you still feel this way in another week or so, book a consultation.” Dr Vischek intertwined his fingers as he propped his elbows up on the desk. “I would like you to see a psychiatrist though. It could be related to stress or a repressed traumatic memory… I know it was a long time ago, but what happened to your mother might be affecting you in a subconscious way. It would be good to get a specialist’s opinion.”
The mention of my mother sent a jolt of pain through my heart. Surely her untimely death couldn’t somehow be triggering this? I dealt with that… incident… years ago. I’m over it, aren’t I? “You know about my mother?”
