Do not exceed stated dosage

For the last week or so I’ve been suffering from a sore throat. I say it’s a sore throat, but as is often the case with men it’s likely to be a sign that my tonsils are about to explode. Or maybe a problem with the muscles that make me swallow. Or acid reflux from some serious problem in my digestive system. Or cancer. Possibly a combination of all of the above. Whatever it is I’m almost certainly going to die from it, and soon.

As is also often the way with men, I have taken to self-prescribing alongside making my diagnosis. In fairness, I do suffer from tonsillitis a lot. So much in fact that my doctor started withholding treatment unless it got really bad, on which ocassion he’d declare ‘cor blimey, they are large’ – something I only like to hear in certain situations and definitely not from a medical professional.

That pretty much leaves me with the medication available over the counter. The blackcurrant-flavoured sweets are good for soothing, but all carry a warning that they’ll cause you to have bowel movements as frequently as low cost flights take off from Heathrow – something with comes with a whole different list of possible diagnoses, all resulting in death. Then there’s paracetamol or ibuprofen. Each work fine, but if I took them every time I had tonsillitis my stomach and intestines would start to resemble Alexander Fleming’s kitchen table during his early experiments with penicilin.

As is often the way, although my affliction is both unbearable and terrible and will almost certainly going to result in my departing this world, I’ve chosen to ignore it hope for the best.

You see, I’ve come to realise over the years that much of the medical world is simply trial and error. I had a few extra teeth removed at a hospital when I was in my teens and a nerve removed from another. In asking my current dentist what the future might hold for that tooth I’m told we’ll just have to wait and see. Shouldn’t his surgery be lined with leather-bound textbooks on dentistry and notable case histories? I could save myself time and money by ‘waiting and seeing’ at home. Myself. No need for years at dentist college for that one.

It’s the same in the world of optometry. Yes, they all have certificates on the wall, and yes you should really have a chart that lights up with revolving letters on it, but essentially all they’re doing is trying a lens in front of your eye and asking you if it’s better. Why not cut out the middle-man? You can in your local supermarket. Just put on a pair of specs and read the chart. If you can now read the letters that you couldn’t before, they’re the pair for you. Job’s a good’n. I’ve got a more complicated prescription that means I need contact lenses prescribed in a hospital, but even then I’m told to ‘try these’ for couple of months and see how they are. More trial and error.

It’s started in optometry, and with constipation tablets and creams for ladies’ sore bits, that we’ve dispensed with the dispensers and started self-diagnosing/prescribing in the supermarket aisles. I predict that it won’t be long until there’ll be do-it-yourself colonic irrigation units in Sainsburys and tonsillectomy stalls in Tescos. Maybe Asda, being part of the American WalMart chain, will start an aisle where you can perform your own liposuction, or more likely you’d perform it on a friend so that you had someone to hold the bucket.

Of course that will never happen. Partly because the powers that be will have to protect those of us with a hypochondriatic streak, but mostly because 50% of the population like myself will be at work, ignoring our symptoms writing our own eulogies in our lunchbreak.