No holiday this year

So here's the scenario. John, just diagnosed with DVT (deep vein thrombosis) and I are being given The Talk. The doctor in question gives a lot of these talks, and is determined that we shouldn't miss a single word. We are shown a figure with blue lines for the veins, and red for the arteries (try to remember that. Blue for veins, red for arteries), and he begins to describe what's happened, in mind-numbing detail. I mention that I'm a nurse, and I know about DVTs, but that's brushed aside. We have to listen. To all of it. He is, he tells us, the expert, and no-one for miles around knows as much about DVTs as he does (GPs, apparently, know nothing at all). We say what about our holiday (which should start tomorrow)? He ploughs on. We must visit the hospital for tests on Monday, says he. But our holiday? Without treatment, John will be dead in seven weeks, says he (in the couse of the interview, he tells us this three times). John begins to lose his temper. The doctor announces that he, too, is becoming angry, and is taking ten minutes out to calm down. I lecture John on the necessity of keeping his cool, because (a) it's polite, and (b) we never know when we might need this doctor again (perish the thought).

The doctor returns, John apologises very nicely (as I have instructed him to), and we proceed. We are told again that we need to come back for tests on Monday (our holiday is brushed aside, once again, as is the fact the Monday is a bank holiday). We are shown horrific pictures of the worst case scenario (a man with what looks like a large, supurating black balloon on his chest; I'm still not sure what that was supposed to be). Our holiday? we ask. Again. That's ok, says he. We can go on our hoilday. What, flying? Certainly. But what about the tests on Monday? Ah. That's ok, because we can find a doctor and a hospital and get them all done when we're there (he hasn't asked where we are going; it could be Brighton, or Australia). We will be in Corsica, we explain. Miles from any hospital.

At last he hears us. No We can't go on our holiday (I thought not), but we must still come back on Monday for tests because otherwise John will be dead in seven weeks blah blah blah....

I cannot fault the doctor's patience, and I'm sure his knowledge is second to none But by the end of an hour I feel like going out and beating my brains to a pulp against the concrete in the car park (whose machines we have been steadily feeding with coins during the course of our ordeal). It is bad enough having to cancel our holiday, but this quite unnecessary lecture is the final straw. (As is the pile of lovely new books sitting waiting to go on holiday with us.)

Well, at least we can sit at home and read...