3. What’s up, Doc?
“Looking fifty is great – if you’re sixty.” – Joan Rivers
“I needto see Dr Ford right away!” The receptionist’s hair puffed backwards from the sudden burst of air as I practically slammed into the reception desk, knocking a pile of brochures onto the floor.
“Dr Ford?”
“Yes, I must see her now!”
“But Dr Ford retired years ago.”
“Huh?” Oh yeah. She’d probably be about seventy by now.
“Mrs McSnelly, are you all right?”
God, my name sounded even worse out loud. “No, I’m not. I really need to see a doctor. I’m supposed to be twenty-five but I woke up this morning a middle-aged housewife and have no idea how I got here! I don’t know if I’m sick, or crazy – or both! I need answers!” I thumped my fist on the desk, my breaths coming short and sharp.
“Okay, just a moment, Mrs McSnelly.” The receptionist put on a headset and spoke into the microphone as I tapped my foot impatiently and glanced around the waiting room. A man eyed me with pity, but when I locked eyes with him he quickly looked away. Ryan stood behind a fake pot plant, fiddling with its leaves. My eyes turned to the floor and feeling slightly guilty, I picked up the brochures and replaced them on the desk.
“Dr Vischek can see you in a few minutes,” the receptionist said, lifting off her headset. “Take a seat… and try taking some deep breaths, okay?”
Deep breaths, yeah right. Like that’s going to get me out of this nightmare.
“Would you like a paper bag?” the receptionist asked.
“What for? Do you mean to put over my head? Geez! I know I’m not looking my best but have a little compassion!” I fumed. Oh, the nerve of the woman.
Her eyes widened and she spoke softly, “To breathe into. So you don’t hyperventilate.”
Oops. “Oh. Sorry, um, no thanks, I’ll just…” I gestured awkwardly to the row of chairs.
I sat down and a moment later Ryan sat next to me. Unable to stifle my foot tapping and hand trembling, I picked up what looked like an iPad from a small table and looked at the menu on the screen. I pressed the icon for magazines and then the icon for Domestic Delight. I flipped mindlessly through articles about home improvements and decorating, until an advertisement for a homewares company caught my eye. KC Interiors. Interesting… when I was younger, I used to play around with sketches of beautiful lamps, mirrors, vases and candle holders, and joked that I could start my own business called Kelli’s Designs.
That was until one of my mother’s ‘episodes’ where she ridiculed my artistic passion and I lost all confidence, gaining confidence in my appearance instead. Why waste the gift of a photogenic face and perfectly proportioned figure? That’s what Mum used to tell me as she dragged me from one photo shoot to another. At first they were boring, but I soon grew to love the whole thing – photographers calling me beautiful as lights flashed around me, make-up artists complimenting my almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones as they brushed colours onto my face. There was nothing more rewarding than seeing the finished product – a glossy professional photo of yours truly.
“Mrs McSnelly?” A man, presumably Dr Vischek, emerged from a nearby room. “Please come through.”
I put the iPad thingy back on the table and bolted into the room, pacing back and forth until the doctor made me sit down.
“I saw you only a month ago, Mrs McSnelly. What seems to be the problem?”
Oh good, maybe he knew something. Maybe I was being treated for a brain tumour and was experiencing one of the symptoms or side effects. “I’m fifty!” I blurted out.
Dr Vischek looked at the file on his computer screen. “Ah, so you are. Happy birthday!”
“Happy? I’m not happy. I’m horrified!” I stood up again. “Only yesterday I was twenty-five. This can’t be possible! How is this possible?”
Dr Vischek tugged on my arms to encourage me to sit down again. What was it with sitting down, how was that supposed to make everything all right? I was a model and used to standing, godammit!
“I know how you feel, Mrs McSnelly, it seems only yesterday I was a new doctor, newly married with a newborn baby and now I’ve been in practice for fifteen years and have three kids. Time sure flies, doesn’t it?” Dr Vischek gave me a knowing grin.
“But you don’t understand! I really was only twenty-five yesterday… well, twenty-four to be exact. Today should be my twenty-fifth birthday, but I woke up and… well, look at me!” I stood once again and waved my hands around my degenerative body like I was demonstrating a new kitchen appliance. I pressed my belly, allowing it to wobble, lifted my drooping breasts out of the southern hemisphere for a moment and pointed to the rugged landscape that was my face. “I even have wrinkles on my lips!” I shoved my face close to his so he could see. “Before too long I’ll be power-walking down the pathway to the retirement village wearing a pink velour leisure suit!”
“Mrs McSnelly, try to stay calm,” the doctor said, lifting his hands and facing his palms towards me as though I might be a bomb about to explode any second. “Are you telling me you’re having some memory issues, or are you just stressed out about turning fifty?”
“Of course I’m stressed about turning fifty, but the thing is, I don’t remember being forty-nine yesterday, or forty-eight the year before. The last thing I remember is having drinks with my friends last night. But last night I was twenty-four.” This time I sat down of my own accord, suddenly tired and wishing I could lie down. Lie down, close my eyes and wake up in my own bed.
Dr Vischek leaned forward in his chair, deep furrows drawing a V into his forehead. “Do you remember bumping your head, or falling, or having any sort of pain, tingling, or numbness?”
I shook my head and he shone a bright light into each of my eyes.
“Taken any medications, drugs – marijuana even?”
“Of course not!”
“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?”
“Of course, I’ve been your doctor for years. It’s my job to know your family medical history.”
“How soon do you think I’d be able to see the psychiatrist?”
“There might be a bit of a wait, but I’ll mark the referral as urgent.” He typed on the virtual keyboard on his computer screen. “In the meantime, try to enjoy your day. Make the most of it – have some fun, do something different! You never know, by the time the day’s over, everything might just make perfect sense.”
“I hope so.”
“Here,” he continued, taking hold of my wrist. “I’ll upload these referrals to your e-pad.” Dr Vischek withdrew a USB drive from his computer and connected it to my e-pad, before acknowledging my confusion. “Do you remember how to work your e-pad?”
I shook my head. “I hadn’t even heard of them till this morning, but my, um… Ryan showed me how to make a call.”
Dr Vischek showed me all the basic functions, including how to retrieve the referrals, how to access my virtual driver’s license, credit cards and other important cards that would normally fill up my purse, and he also showed me how to scan my e-pad when making purchases. Apparently I was now living in a cashless society, it was kinda cool.
I stood and shook the doctor’s hand. “Thank you very much, Dr Vischek, for seeing me right away and for your advice.”
“You’re welcome. I’m sorry I don’t have any definitive answers, but I think everything will be all right. I wouldn’t be surprised if the next twenty-four hours makes a world of difference, and if not, the specialist can advise you further.”
I nodded and turned to leave, before turning back again. “Dr Vischek?”
His eyebrows rose.
“What does e-pad stand for?”
“Electronic Personal Assistant Device,” he replied with a smile.
Hmm, I wonder if it has a time travel function…
I returned to the reception desk and expertly scanned my e-pad the way Dr Vischek had showed me and the receptionist assured me my rebate had been applied directly to my bank account. She even commented that because I was now a ‘senior’, my consultation fee was less than usual. Nice to have some sort of compensation for the crap that being fifty had given me today, I guess.
“So, you’ve been given the all-clear?” Ryan asked as we walked back to the car.
“Guess so,” I replied.
“And he definitely said you’re in good health, no cause for concern?”
“Just stress, he thinks. But physically I’m fine. He said I should go and enjoy my day.”
“Oh good, we better hurry then.” Ryan picked up his pace as he walked alongside me. “Do I have a surprise for you!”