When I was born, in the dim hazy days of 1978 (shut up Matt), Dr Kelly arrived mere moments after the big event. He’s still there, in the clinic, seeing people 32 years after opening his clinic.  The clinic itself used to be a house, which you can tell by looking at it really. When I was a mere slip of a child it was a waiting room (the old lounge room, boarded up fireplace and all), two or three consulting rooms and possibly a nurses office. These days, with the extensions and modernizing, there’s a dental clinic, physio and 5 consulting rooms, plus large nurses office for the collection of blood and the small GP procedures, which is why I was there today.

Generally speaking, I’ve had only goodness from the doctors there. I say generally because there’s one or two incidents where things didn’t go to plan, but 2 small things in 31 years is a pretty good record, I reckon.  I’ve never felt ridiculed, humiliated or bashed by the doctors there, and I think that’s probably one of the most important things. If you can’t feel that you can present with anything – no matter how small – then you’re going to have stuff missed.

I hadn’t seen Dr Kelly the elder (sorry Paul) for a long time, but I went to see him a while back with my stupid ankle. Being as I was a lady having lady problems in my teens, I switched to the female doctors back then. Still, he remembered stuff about me that I’d forgotten, despite the passage of maybe 10 or 15 years since I’d seen him to talk to. My other usual doctors tend to stop for chats as well, my most common GP – Denise – taking great interest in travel plans and whatnot. It’s good, it’s a personal service and it’s nice to have personable doctors. I dare say in a larger clinic it’d be different, but my town isn’t really a rushed sort of place (yet, they’re working on it).

Today’s visit was to get a lump cut out of my arm. The doctor (daughter of the aforementioned Dr Kelly) is 98% certain it’s nothing troublesome, but I’ll get the results next week.  In the meantime I’ll just stagger around and make a big fuss out of a small pain in order to get sympathy.