I had an embarrassing visit to the doctor’s | Steve Canavan

To be fair it was my own fault.

I've been going to the toilet quite a lot lately, I mean an unusual amount. For example one night a few weeks back I went to the toilet five times. Five.

Granted I’d drunk nine pints of lager the previous evening but, still, it seems like excessive toilet usage. No, seriously, I have been a bit worried about my frequent urinating and this, coupled with a rather persistent pain in my groin, prompted me to go to the doc’s to rule out anything sinister.

When I phoned to book an appointment, the receptionist, as they always do these days, asked why I wanted to see a doctor.

I always really want to reply ‘none of your business’, obviously, but I find it doesn’t lead to a harmonious conversation thereafter, so I told her I was going to the toilet a lot.

I heard her type something and she made me a phone appointment with a doctor, to whom I explained my wee worries.

‘We’ll give you a blood test,’ the doctor said, so a few days later I trekked to the surgery to get it done.

It’s the first time I’ve been to the doctor’s in lockdown and it’s fair to say things have changed a bit.

As many will no doubt know, you are no longer allowed to get out of your car, so have to sit in your parked vehicle until someone wanders out of the surgery and points in your direction, although you’re not sure if it’s your car they’re pointing at so you kind of raise your hand and mouth: ‘Who, me?’ and if they nod, you jump out and follow them inside.

In some ways it’s better than having to sit in a crowded waiting room with a group of folk coughing and wheezing and generously swapping their germs around – though on the downside though you don’t get to read those wonderful, incredibly niche magazines only ever found in GPs surgeries (Caravaning Weekly, Model Airplane Magazine, Tapestry and Needlepoint – ‘this month Jean Haverthwaite tells you how to get that basketweave stitch exactly right’).

The blood test didn’t take long. I’m told by every nurse I see I have ‘very good veins’, which means they stick out. She jabbed me, and I was told to return a few days later for another appointment at which I’d get my results.

‘Your blood levels came back fine,’ said a very young but very nice doctor as I sat down in her office. ‘The PSA was fine and we checked for diabetes too, which was negative’.

‘That’s great,’ I said, standing up to leave. ‘Thanks for your time.’

‘Well, actually it says on my notes you wanted an internal examination,’ she said.

‘Erm, “want” is probably the wrong word,’ I quipped. Her facial expression did not alter.

I told her if the PSA levels were not a concern (high PSA being a sign of prostate cancer) then I was okay with that.

‘The PSA levels are only an indicator,’ she told me. ‘It doesn’t completely rule out cancer.’

This flummoxed me a bit. I didn’t really want an internal examination – I had one at Singapore airport in the late ’90s and have walked with a slight limp since – but clearly would kick myself if something serious was wrong.

‘Well, erm, if you think it’s the right thing to do?’ I said, sort of vaguely hoping she’d have a change of heart and reply: ‘Oh let’s not bother then, let’s just take a chance all is okay’.

Instead she replied: ‘Right, we’ll do one. I’m just a trainee doctor so I’ll get my male colleague from next door to come in. Are we okay to do it twice?’

I gawped at her. What next? Were they going to ask if the receptionist wanted a little feel round too?

‘I’d rather, erm, it just be done the once if that’s OK?’ I replied politely, feeling, in a very British kind of way, slightly bad as I was aware she was only asking so she could further her own experience and education of feeling inside bottoms.

‘Anywhere else on the body no problem but, you know, the backside…’ I added before trailing off. Not for the first time she stared at me in a slightly suspicious and puzzled manner.

She disappeared and returned a few minutes later with a male colleague who, I noted, had alarmingly large hands and a chunky ring on his wedding finger. Thankfully – or maybe not, given she wasn’t a fully qualified doctor – the woman told me she would be doing the examination.

I stood up but before I’d reached the plastic blue couch thing where I assumed the examination would be carried out, she asked me to lower my trousers and underpants. I was assuming I could do this after I’d lay down, thus preserving a shred of my dignity, but you don’t question a doctor and so it was that I found myself stood, tackle out, on a Monday morning in front of two people I’d known for less than five minutes.

I clambered on the couch (tricky when your pants are around your ankles) and the doctor told me to pull my knees up to my chest. She put some gel on her gloves and told me it might feel cold.

‘Right, here we go,’ she said, like we were about to set off on a family holiday to Anglesey.

But, I am pleased to report, nothing bad happened and the whole thing was over in an instant, with the added bonus that my prostate, apparently, was not enlarged and there was nothing to be worried about.

‘I guess I just go to the toilet a lot,’ I said, to which the male doctor nodded in agreement.

So, I’ll still be getting up at 2am and 5am to use the loo, but at least I can rest easy in the knowledge that my prostate is still in decent working order and I won’t have to drop my trousers at the doc’s again any time soon.