Читать книгу Unf*ck Yourself, Unf*ck the World - Kagiso Msimango - Страница 8

Dr Dax called for the nurse to fetch my daughter from his consulting room, and instructed her to keep Lebone occupied. He wanted to talk to me “privately”, he offered as he turned to face me, peering at me intensely over his glasses.

“Why are you not the one seeing me?” the doctor asked, his head cocked to the side, his face a mixture of concern, curiosity, and what seemed to me like disapproval.

“In fact, I was referred to you by my boss Reggie Meyer, but my daughter had this problem and, seeing that it’s school holidays, I thought I’d bring her to you. Reggie says you are really good. I tried to get appointments for both of us and couldn’t, so I decided to start with her.” I responded rapidly, feeling curiously defensive.

Earlier in the week, my boss had called me into his office, given me a Post-It with a doctor’s name and number scribbled on it, and suggested I make an appointment. He didn’t offer an explanation as to why he wanted me to see this doctor, and I didn’t press him. He simply told me that the doctor was his personal physician and that he was very good. Although I had been feeling crappy for a really long time, I was scared to probe, in case I had messed up to such a degree that he felt I needed medical intervention.

“You really must come see me soon. Very soon,” Dr Dax stated firmly.

“Okay,” I responded, followed with a tentative, “But why?”

He started asking me a string of questions about symptoms I may be experiencing, and I answered in the affirmative to every single one of them. I was shocked that he’d know all of these things were wrong with me just by being in my presence for less than 15 minutes, while examining my daughter.

For a distressingly long time, I had been battling with a whole range of issues that were so varied I didn’t think they had anything to do with each other; ranging from painfully dry skin to brain fog, unexplained and persistent weight gain, acne breakouts, anxiety attacks, insomnia, loss of libido, weird food cravings and a failing memory – I had even taken to walking around with a notebook because I could no longer rely on my memory. The doctor had one condition to explain them all. I had Adrenal Fatigue. A severe case, my various blood and saliva tests would later reveal.

I left his rooms feeling an equal mixture of relief and dread.

A couple of years before I was ambushed by Dr Dax, I was in a studio recording voice-overs for a TV show I was doing. The studio was at the sound technician’s home, which also housed a toddler, two going on three. She knew to never disturb daddy while he was working. The child, a cute girl by the name of Amber, didn’t really need a bottle any more but she was attached to it. She had been playing on the balcony, holding her precious bottle, when it slipped from her hands and landed one storey below. The blow left multiple cracks in the hard plastic, and milk had started to seep out. Amber’s bottle was beyond repair.

This all occurred while we were busy in the studio, so we hadn’t witnessed the fatal accident. Immediately after, Amber burst into the studio, despite knowing very well that she was not allowed in there. She was cradling her wounded bottle in her chubby hands, her eyes glistening with tears.

Before her dad had a chance to reprimand her for breaking this most cardinal rule, with arms outstretched, displaying her demolished bottle, Amber declared definitively, in the most heartbreaking tone I’d heard from a toddler, “Daddy, it’s fucked.”

In the years after that incident I have chuckled over that scene many times, because I’ve never witnessed a more appropriate use of the word “fucked” before or since.

When I got home from Dr Dax’s offices, I immediately logged on to the internet to research “Adrenal Fatigue”. As I flipped through various medical and anecdotal articles on the condition, it dawned on me that I was fucked, friend. Amber’s bottle fucked.