A computer will be able to diagnose our medical condition by using a single hair, so I read.
This has rather upset me. I enjoy the interrogation and examination at the doctor’s; the reporting to the nice, understanding receptionist who listens to my symptoms, how it came on me suddenly and I’m not sure where I caught it but there is a lot of it about whatever it is and I’m not as young as I used to be and I suppose one must expect even the best engines to run down. Wink, wink.
She smiles at me over my file, that dossier of my decay, which is in a cute cardboard folder as secretive as the CIA.
And I take it to my doctor like a child presenting his report card and he looks at it and looks at me and looks back again and says how do I feel. I tell him how it came on me suddenly and I’m not sure where I caught it but there is a lot of it about.
For one thing, this is my way of getting the most out of my medical benefits. So I usually go along with my main malady but as the doctor examines me I throw in two or three other symptoms to make it interesting and informative.
No, I haven’t lost weight. Yes it does hurt a little there, no, there, wait it’s back there. Breathe in deeply. The doctor breathes in deeply, too.
And all the time I’m saying I’m not as young as I was and there is a lot of it at the office and he smiles wanly and he be gins writing in my folder and I start to wriggle my chair around so I can see.
Then he takes my blood pressure, that tightening of the arm as he pumps me up like an old tyre and all the while keeps the indicators hidden from me.
How high is it doctor? Well, it’s not a danger to aerial navigation but it would be better for all of us if I watched my diet and I say I never take my eyes off it.
Oh, there’s something else, doctor, just down here. Oh, he says, and puts me on the table in the surgery and I close my eyes while he presses here and there and I think what a specimen I am; Adonis run to fat; Apollo gone pudgy.
But I am really giving my medical benefits a shake now.
Temperate at meals
He finally hands me my file. Come back in a fortnight. Come back and we’ll go over it all again, he says. Try to be temperate. No returns at meals. I turn my big, slow eyes on him like an old dog, wise in the way of bones. Next please.
I return my file to the kind receptionist and I lean on the counter for a few moments saying that I don’t think I’m as bad as the last time and she’ll say discreetly she thinks I’m no worse and, if anything, I’ve lost a little.
Then I go off humming to myself, taking out my medical benefits card and sneering at it a little.
But now comes this scheme, diagnosis by computer. Surrender a hair and it’s all there.
The key is in your locks.
I can tell you this; no hair of mine is suffering a pate worse than death. I can see it now. The cold impersonal computer wrenching and examining. The final indignity.
Fatchen’s last strand.
There I’ll be in the wait ing room. “We’re doing your hair now, Fatchen.
The man in the next seat is restive, too. He has just come from the vet’s with the hair of the dog…
I ask questions about my hair but they’re brushed aside. Finally the computer doctor appears.
He places a hand on my shoulder: “We did our best. You know how it is: hair today and gone tomorrow.”
But as I leave I do gain a little comfort from the sign they hang on the door.
“Computer closed due to dandruff.”
Max Fatchen