DAKTARI'S OUT TO GET ME

"Chew on gum and eat salty crackers. Apparently it helps with that steely taste in your mouth and the loss of appetite after chemotherapy." that was Monthe Sila,MD. My whole life rotates around doctors and hospitals and I love it. It's the closest i could get to my dream of becoming a doctor. All is not lost though. I could still do my years of legal studies and computer science after which I embark on my ten years of med school and die a happy woman. "She died in the line of purpose" my eulogy shall read.


So Saturday afternoon was spent pretty much naked, in a darkened room, while a ruggedly handsome young man applied lashings of warm lubricating jelly on my soft underbelly. Fantasy aside, he is old, physically harsh to the eye but fit for the job. But am allowed to create my own pictures if it makes me happy. Sounds like fun. Unfortunately, this was an ultrasound test, part of my fifth medical so far this year.


I have been bent double, pumped up, sucked dry and asked a range of questions so impertinent that even John Sibi-Okumu would blanch. I have been hit, probed, tickled, smeared and X-rayed, and I've forgotten what it's like to pee in a lavatory. These days, i only ever relieve myself into small plastic vials.


When Mitch first went to high school, the doctor held his testicles and asked him to cough. He could have established his reflexes were fine by tapping his knees gently with a small rounders bat, but hey, he went to a public school, so into his pants the doctor plunged. Mine was milder, the school nurse used to wring and squeeze my belly in the name of life detection. That was enough to abort whichever human life was there anyway.

Today, you get into a hospital and the first question is, "Do you have AIDS?". Well, unless you can catch it by slobbing infront of your laptop or reading volumes of legal books, I very much doubt it.


The second question is whether you are partial to a bit of same-sex heroin. Can we just get one thing clear. I know there are no Restore and Build Kenya (RBK) voters in the media, but there are several heterosexuals and am one of them. And no, i have never enjoyed the luxury of Koinange Street men, and the only hypodermic needle I've seen all week is the one you are about to plunge into my arm to confirm I'm not lying.

The fact that you smoke 45 cigars a day and hot box on weed the entire night never seem to bother doctors. Not until you get to page 331 of the form.

When they are convinced I am not the Campus Diva who has taken prostitution to a whole new level, they move on to check my blood pressure. Mine is 100/60, same as it was last month, when Pledge 25 asked the same damn thing.

Then you pee in another jug, and then you relax as the nurse hunts around for the tiny bit of blood you have left after Pledge 25 had their fill the previous month. After all the blood tests this month, I couldn't be a donor even to an injured cockroach in my house. small wonder the pressure is so low.

After the fluid tests, the doctor usually sticks his whole head into my vagina. Well that’s what it always feels like. “Aaaaaaargh.” I normally say until he comes out again only to explain that it was only his finger.

Soon, you will be led to daktari’s scales which, in doctor’s surgeries,  are always set to over-read. I am 53kgs, minus the few decimated kilos of all the blood and urine that has been extracted. But in Daktari's surgery, i weigh the same as Manuel Uribe. This, to my grandmother, is a good thing. Fat people are ipso facto unatrractive, which means they are less likely to be having much in the way of woman-on-man action.

At the end of the session, by which time everyone in the waiting room has died from whatever it was that brought them there in the first place, you will be asked to give your family medical history dating back to the Medieval Age.

Why? Even after the doc has hit you in the elbow with his hammer and asked you to read his wall, he will still not know if there are tumours the size of conkers dangling from your brain, but the form will be completed anyway.

I haven't finished yet because at some point the GP will uncover something that warrants further investigation. This will mean a trip to KNH where I will get lost.

I did, and that's how I came to be lying in a darkened room, with my dream guy smearing me with KY jelly. He then ran his ultrasound detector all over my belly, befor turning on the light and giving me the good news. I'm not pregnant.