The Sore Sound

This one's for you, Dr MJ.

There is a sound, made by patients, that I am incapable of reproducing.

This sound is akin to nails screeching down a chalkboard in its ability to cause me physical pain.

Needles, like poison-tipped needles puncturing my tympanic membranes.

It is not the agonising groan of the patient with the ruptured appendix.

Nor is it the gasp of the patient being given the horrifically painful bicillin injection to cure their syphilis.

Oh no, it is the sound made by the “otherwise well” patient.

The patient that you spot happily chatting away to the receptionist in the waiting room.

The patient, that jumps up when the receptionists calls their name.

The patient that, as soon as they walk into your office, and see your face, immediately makes “THE SORE SOUND”.

No, “ Hello Doc”.

No, “This is my problem”.

Just. This. Damn. Sound.

I can’t even describe it – let me try,

“SSSsssthhhhhhmm”.

NO wait, that’s not right, it’s more like,

“Phffffffffffffffhhhhhshhhtttmmmm”.

Jees, I’m not doing this properly...

It’s like the sharp indrawing of a breath while at the same time exhaling and whistling through one’s teeth and moaning.

It is also invariably accompanied by sorrowful head shaking, the avoidance of eye contact and the slow rubbing of a fat thigh.

They make the sound for about sixty seconds. Unmercilessly.

By this time I am hiding under the desk...whimpering, clutching my knees, and rocking slowly back and forth while a little drool dribbles out the side of my cheek.

My regression into a basket case is due to the knowledge of what the Sore Sound actually means. It is signal that announces that the next seven hundred hours of your life are going to be spent listening to this patient complain about a painful something - usually a knee, or foot.

A knee or foot, that is under immense physical pressure from the unjust weight of the gargantuan monstrous thigh and buttock that is certainly the cause of the pain in the first place.

Oh no you don't, don't you dare call me a fattist!

Only when you have a morbidly obese patient sitting across from you making the sore sound, who:

1:Refuses to listen to your multiple counselling sessions to lose weight.

2:Refuses to keep the many appointments you have made for the dietitian because they coincide with the annual church cake sale.

3:Never went to the orthopaedic surgeon you referred her to because the state health service is so overwhelmed that an appointment could only be made for 7 months down the line and therefore was forgotten about.

4:Prefers to sit in your office and make the sore sound, and complain about the pain, so that she can just be prescribed the damn voltaren tablets that, "the other doctors know to give me, Doctor."


Then, only then, after suffering all of this, are you allowed to tell me I'm being rude...

Of course,by then it will be too late...

I won't be able to listen to you seeing as the patient has just successfully worked on my last nerve, namely the cochlear!