My Hand

I dreamt that my doctor asked me to take her to see her doctor. She was scared of doctors and needed the support. I thought it was strange, as I dreamt it, yet in the dream itself, it seemed perfectly normal.

She wanted me to actually go in with her when her name was called and she held my hand as we walked along the corridor behind her doctor. She was very, very nervous but was putting on a brave face because I was with her. She was squeezing my hand so tightly that it was actually going numb and purple.

I did have faint thoughts in the back of my mind like...’hmm I really don’t think a doctor should be so scared of other doctors’ and ‘ha, I thought she was an iron lady, who knew she had a soft side’ and ‘she always seems so together and in control when I see her as a doctor’ and of course there was the whole ‘mental note to self, get a new doctor ASAP’ thing happening as well.

But when we got to the doctor’s office which was way, way, way down the end of the extraordinary long corridor, all those ‘strange’ thoughts disappeared and I was just sitting there with my friend, supporting her.

My doctor was all giggly and blushing and fidgety (I didn’t even know she knew how to giggle, she was always so ‘professional’ and serious), obviously giggling was her way of coping. She was so nervous that she could barely get the words out that she needed to say, which made me think WOW so she does understand how awkward it is to talk to a doctor sometimes, good to know.

Oh and all this time, my hand was still being squeezed harder and harder and harder. My hand was now the size of one of those football foam hands that you see in all the American movies, you know the kind that people use to show their support for their team. The size of my hand was starting to concern me and just then it reminded me of a cartoon hand.

Strange how no one seemed to noticed the size of my poor hand expect me. Her doctor was sitting there calmly waiting for her to get the words out and was acting like it was a perfectly normal situation. He was oblivious to my hand swelling to the point of exploding, which was actually blocking his view of his patient. My doctor was squirming about, umming and ahhing, still giggling a lot and trying to find her words. My hand starts to throb and I grimace in pain but don’t say a word.

My pain must have distracted me because the next thing I hear is her doctor saying ‘oh we can fix that with an injection. You will have to inject yourself 3 times a day, after meals with this’, and he brings out a huge syringe and tries to hand it to my doctor. My doctor takes one look, burst out in tears and screams ‘Nooooooooooooooooooooooo’. Her scream is accompanied by one last massive squeeze of my hand which now looks like a child’s balloon hovering above our heads.

I can’t restrain myself any longer and I let out the loudest  most ear piercing scream I can muster to try and relieve this pain. My doctor is looking at me and I am looking at her, our faces are but centimetres away from each other and we are both screaming hysterically with the most horrified expressions on our faces. Our gazes are fixed directly into each other’s eyes, then I hold my hand up and we both look towards it then back to each other’s eyes, then we focus on the syringe, then back to each other’s eyes again... screaming the entire time like two crazy women.

Her doctor doesn’t seem to notice this either and hands her the syringe (imagine one the size of a small child being handed to her) along with numerous ampules of clear liquid.

My doctor has to let go of my hand to take the syringe and ampules being forced into her lap and my hand drops lifelessly to the floor. I look down at it and feel very, very sad. My poor hand, it was such a good hand. I shake my head slowly from side to side and I actually start to grieve for it.

My doctor is feeling more confident with herself. ‘Ohhhhhhh is that all I have to do, I can do that, only some injections, I can do that. I do that all the time, I was so worried, but I can do that’. She actually looked relieved now and there was even a smile starting to form on her face. She was saying to her doctor that she ‘expected so much worse’. She looked at the drug and was laughing now, ‘oh it’s only that drug, that drug is fine, I prescribe that drug to my own patients every day’. The minute the syringe was in her hands, she was back to her regular self, she was ‘a doctor’ again and not my friend who needed support.  

She smiles happily looks at me and says ‘come on, it’s time to leave’. We walk out of the doctor’s office and back down the extraordinary very, very, very long corridor. She has her arms filled with syringes and ampules and is so proud of herself. I walk beside her looking sad and depressed dragging my very, very, very long and stretch out arm with the huge, dead purple hand attached to it, behind me. Again only I seem to notice my ‘cartoon style arm and hand’, all the way down the corridor.