This article is a preview from the Autumn 2016 edition of New Humanist. You can find out more and subscribe here.
I do my best to disconcert my doctor. Three weeks before my six-monthly check-up, I cut out bread and rice and pasta and cake so that he doesn’t have to waste a single breath telling me once again about the well-proven link between obesity and diabetes. I also put in several dozen extra shifts on the Concept 2 Rowing Machine so as to ensure that my resting heart rate doesn’t run into the danger zone on his monitor. And, on the morning of the check-up, I forfeit my usual strong coffee so as to avoid the possibility that his pneumatic armband will reveal the slightest hint of raised blood pressure.
Of course, I recognise that all this careful preparation is medically incongruous. What is the point of asking my doctor for his professional opinion on my current state of health when I’ve done everything in my power to disguise any sign that it might need just such attention? Nonetheless, all in all, I’d rather live with this contradiction than endure the moralising which now seems almost as de rigueur for the modern GP as it did for the parish priest who heard my weekly confession back in the 1950s.
Halfway through my latest check-up it looked as though my careful preparation had worked. For although my doctor had done his best to maintain a neutral expression as he tapped my abdomen with his knuckles, applied a small hammer to my knees and peered deeply into the depths of my eyes and my ears, I could sense he was profoundly disappointed. There he stood, with multiple sermons about the link between loose living and poor health on the tip of his tongue, and yet not one of his tests had so far provided him with a licence to spill.
Even as he gingerly removed his index finger and pronounced my prostate to be in good order, I sensed that I had him beaten. All he had left in his examination armoury now was the weighing machine. “How’s the weight been going?” he asked as we strolled over to the scales. “Oh, you know, I think it’s kept pretty steady. After all one doesn’t want to get overweight and risk developing diabetes.” (It was a calculated insult. There is nothing that doctors resent so much as patients proffering their own diagnosis.)
“Your weight is satisfactory,” he said grudgingly. “But there is one thing you should know about.”
He resumed his seat behind the desk and steepled his fingers in the manner recommended at medical school for the conveyance of disturbing news.
“What’s that?” I asked, settling in my chair.
“You’ve lost height.”
“How do you mean ‘lost’?”
“You are half a centimetre smaller than the last time you attended this surgery. It’s gravity. Your body is slowly sinking into your shoes. It tends to happen with people who have lived a little longer than others.”
He’d done it. He’d finally found a way to inject some morality. Oh, yes, gravity might be the real villain, but I was also being told in no uncertain terms that I’d contributed to my own shrinkage by living for such an immoral length of time. If only I’d had the good sense to die a little sooner I wouldn’t now have to face the indignity of discovering that scores of people who had always fallen beneath my gaze would now be able to tower above me.
It was certainly a nasty shock, but there was no way in which I was going to make my discomfiture evident. I could at least deny him the satisfaction of telling me that the condition was progressive.
“Thank you very much,” I said promptly, and headed for the surgery door.
My partner was making a chickpea salad when I arrived home.
“Everything all right?” she asked in the cavalier manner she reserves for conversations about my health.
“Oh, yes, I’m fine,” I told her. “Hunky dory. Except for one thing. Just one thing. One rather important thing.”
“What’s that?” she said, energetically chopping chives.
“I’m losing height,” I said. “And… it may be progressive.”
“Really?” she said. “Well, in that case would you mind handing down the lettuce from the top shelf of the fridge, before you get too small to reach?”
