An unexpected accomplishment

[lethargic_man]

I remember going to the British Museum one day to read up the treatment for some slight ailment of which I had a touch - hay fever, I fancy it was. I got down the book, and read all I came to read; and then, in an unthinking moment, I idly turned the leaves, and began to indolently study diseases, generally. I forget which was the first distemper I plunged into - some fearful, devastating scourge, I know - and, before I had glanced half down the list of "premonitory symptoms," it was borne in upon me that I had fairly got it.

I sat for awhile, frozen with horror; and then, in the listlessness of despair, I again turned over the pages. I came to typhoid fever - read the symptoms - discovered that I had typhoid fever, must have had it for months without knowing it - wondered what else I had got; turned up St. Vitus's Dance - found, as I expected, that I had that too, - began to get interested in my case, and determined to sift it to the bottom, and so started alphabetically - read up ague, and learnt that I was sickening for it, and that the acute stage would commence in about another fortnight. Bright's disease, I was relieved to find, I had only in a modified form, and, so far as that was concerned, I might live for years. Cholera I had, with severe complications; and diphtheria I seemed to have been born with. I plodded conscientiously through the twenty-six letters, and the only malady I could conclude I had not got was housemaid's knee.

I felt rather hurt about this at first; it seemed somehow to be a sort of slight.

I have achieved what Jerome K. Jerome couldn't. Oooh, I'm so proud of myself. ;^)

Comments

[elettaria.livejournal.com]

Does this mean that you have developed housemaid's knee? And would congratulations or commiserations be in order?

I'm sure it's not hayfever in the original!

Prepatellar bursitis

[lethargic-man.livejournal.com]

Neither, really. It doesn't hurt (though I suspect this might not always be the case with this condition); I only noticed I had it when I knelt down last week and my knee went squish and ballooned outward.

I 'phoned my doctor the next day to make an appointment, but they were shut for staff training that day, so I 'phoned the NHS Direct line, and they pointed me to a walk-in centre in Soho.

I went there after work, anticipating a lengthy wait, and was stunned to be admitted to see the triage nurse after less time than it took me to read a single sentence in my book! They explained they couldn't X-ray my knee, or remove fluid, but examined it anyway, pronounced it was inflammed but not infected, and recommended me rest and Ibuprofen; and to go and see my doctor if the inflammation persisted.

As for hayfever, that's what both my copy of Three Men In A Boat and Project Gutenberg's (http://www.gutenberg.net/browse/BIBREC/BR308.HTM) say.