FROM a stationary position, I moved smoothly from the surgery waiting room, negotiated the obstacle of his door without losing momentum as if I had got anti-lock brakes and halted before his desk.
“I have come for my MOT health check,” I announced. “Parp, parp.”
He said I had been the fifth person to say that to him today and he asked me if I smoked. I said no thanks, but he could go ahead and he said he’d not heard that one before and rolled his eyes.
For £2,000 a week, you should get a better class for sarcasm from doctors.
But Gordon Brown’s free MOT health check sounded just the ticket so I persevered.
“Any complaints?” he asked.
“Big end,” I answered, keeping the gag running.
“The check-up is for serious illnesses, not piles.”
“Actually, it’s not piles, it’s the itches. You know the type you get in Woolworths or church or somewhere and it’s excruciating, but you…”
“I don’t want to know. This is all about heart disease, strokes, diabetes and kidney disease. We are trying to cut the hospital admissions and save the NHS millions.”
“So you want me to pull up my trousers?”
“Yes please.”
“And will it all go on the NHS database, the one that various bodies can access?”
He said he expected so and added, most impressed, my blood pressure was high.
I asked him what he’d do if he found, say, I might be heading for heart problems.
He said he would prescribe physical exercise and have my diet and lifestyle monitored.
It all began to sound sinister to me. It’s funny, doctors have always advised exercise and don’t they just love putting you on taste- free diets? But when that information is logged for half the world to tap into anything you say to the doctor is confidential, it’s just between you and him… and the police, the council, the insurance companies and any 10-year-old hacker worth his salt.
And “monitoring your lifestyle”?
A health check for your own good becomes a lifestyle check for someone else’s information. Why do they want to know this anyway? Who are they?
It is one thing being advised to exercise, it’s quite another having it filed away that you are taking a stiff walk to the pub every night.
As they say, I might be paranoid, but am I being paranoid enough?
It will all go in the databank and you can see the headlines now.
“NHS disks left on bus.”
“Health secrets found in skip.”
We all know the whole grandiose scheme will be a disaster anyway. It is law of nature that any cunning plan devised to save the NHS money and improve the service is not only doomed to failure but will cost at least 10 times the original estimate.
Time, I thought, to reverse out of the doctor’s surgery. Parp, parp.
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