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Should We All Get DNA Tested?
I’m a V.O.M.I.T and that’s enough for me
It’s 4pm on Christmas Eve and I’m sat in a hospital waiting room, wondering if I’ll actually make the last train back to my parent’s house for Christmas.
There’s tinsel draped with apparent randomness around and a little shiny Christmas tree behind the receptionist’s computer. The Christmas decorations seem to accentuate the silent desperation of the neurology department, not soften it.
I’m eventually called in and express the polite thanks to my consultant who is remarkably working this late into the holiday. He gets my latest MRI scans up on the screen and there’s my brain, in all its black and grey glory.
‘The lesion is the same as it was four, seven and ten months ago,’ he says. ‘To be honest, we think you’re a vomit.’ He smiles, pleased with himself. I like him. I’ve liked all the neurologists I’ve seen, they never patronise and always seem vaguely amused.
‘A vomit?’
‘A V.O.M.I.T,’ he says, ‘a Victim of Modern Imaging Technology.’
‘Ah ha.’
They say what you don’t know can’t hurt you. Which isn’t generally the rule in medicine but it certainly seems to be here. This brain lesion of mine has kept neurologists scratching their heads for the past…
