In the Waiting Room.

It was a day of waiting and frustration. This literature was supposed to distract me and make the delay seem shorter - it didn't.

The first wait was for a painful shingles immunisation. I had an interesting chat with the nurse along the lines of, "How does a vaccination protect you from a disease that you already carry?" As you must know, shingles is the second coming of the chicken pox that children of my generation, and Jnr's, suffered as a matter of course during childhood. It is a member of the herpes family and, as has often been said, herpes is forever; once you have it, you always have it. The nurse's opinion was that any boost to the immune system will to help to prevent the recurrence; the important thing to me is that I well remember The Old Lady's problems in the last four years of her life and I don't want to ever go through that. The postherpatic neuralgia, the pain after the illness has subsided, stayed with her until the day she died.

The second wait was at the dentist for some minor but still painful repair work. I can understand why the suicide rate amongst dentists is high. It cannot be pleasant staring into the mouth of someone suffering from the effects of a childhood of sugar consumption just after the wartime rationing was removed. While thinking of those who inflict pain with the best of intentions, I was reminded of our vet who loves dogs; the first time he meets most of them is to stick needles in them - not a good way to show a dumb animal how friendly you are. I remember taking an overgrown Rottweiler named "Bear" to him to have an antibiotic administered, half of the dose was in by the time the dog turned on him. No damage was done and they made it up over a few biscuits but the remains of the dose went in the bin rather than into Bear.

I'll save the third wait for another occasion.


I've just posted Sunday's, "Rosslyn Chapel."