Not Playing With Condoms

My allergy test reveals that I’m allergic to…everything. Even the placebo they gave me as a control test and that was a saline solution which, as the consultant pointed out, “Is made of two of the things you’re made of, and so you really shouldn’t be allergic to it.”

I have to wait now for the result of a blood test to confirm a suspected allergy to latex, which was my most spectacular reaction. The consultants (I had three, pampered over-indulged thing that I am) checked I hadn’t recently been exposed to latex in a way that might cause a false positive. “Have you been wearing rubber gloves? Playing with balloons? Or condoms?” And bless them for taking a look at me and deciding I might be more likely to have been playing with balloons than condoms.

The prize for rudest person to be employed in the NHS is shared by every nurse whose job it is to run blood clinics because in my experience of them they’ve all been sullen, ignorant and bovine. Today’s specimen had to be stopped from putting a sticking plaster on me.

“Um, I’m allergic to sticking plasters.” (She’s taking a blood sample for a latex allergy test. It’s written on the specimen bag. She read it. I watched her. Sticking plasters are made of latex.)

“So what are you going to do?” (What am I going to do?)

“Have you got any gauze?”

“No” (Because you work in an allergy clinic where there’s a fair chance you’ll encounter people who are allergic to things, but that’s no reason to make sure you have a stock of hypoallergenic* alternatives, oh no.)

*Because D tells me off if I'm unscientific, I checked hypoallergenic and it turns out to have been made up by advertisers. More startling is the news that you can buy allegedly hypoallergenic pets and one type of hypoallergenic horse, the Bashkir Curly, which Wikipedia describes as 'not flighty' and with 'a great work ethic'. That's all we need, Protestant horses.

Comments

[Hugh]

Fantastic - 'protestant horses'. Made me laugh out loud.

Would they work on Sundays though?

[Mac]

Ditto.. that one had me laughing out loud as well!