A Trololo In My Heart

The very last place you want to go when you’re feeling really sick is the doctor’s – or rather, the doctor’s waiting room. Because, let’s face it, that’s where you’ll spend the vast majority of your visit, wallowing uncomfortably in a cesspit of germs instead of back at home in your jimmy-jams, all comfy-cozy in your own beddy-bedkins.

And yet, after burning hotter than the sun for over 36 hours and having a throat that felt like I was swallowing Bionicle armoury with every small sip of water, that’s exactly where I found myself: sitting in a doctor’s waiting room for a small eternity.

Now I don’t know about anyone else, but I’ve always had this fear I’ll end up sitting next to another waiting patient with a different kind of illness and that somehow our illnesses will morph together into some kind of Super Bug. I mean, that’s what happened with the Avian Bird Flu, right? Someone with a really bad throat infection was sitting next to a chicken with a head cold and BAM! Although, rumour has it that they did a bit more than just “sitting next to each other” but hey, people, let’s not judge them too harshly here! The person and the chicken were really sick and had been waiting far too long in a waiting room which only had issues of ‘That’s Life’ with stories like ‘Oops, I blew myself up!’ and ‘The Baby Making Machines: 2 sisters, 23 kids’ and they weren’t feeling themselves, okay? Although, arguably, they were feeling someone else… and no, I don’t like where this is going any more than you do.

ANYWAY, although I desperately wanted to lie down on the bench, I did my best to sit upright and not to alarm anyone unduly by bursting into flames or screaming (hoarsely) “MY THROAT! MY FUCKING THROAT!”

Luckily, I had a secret weapon on my side. Just before I’d left for the doctor’s, my friend Mrs Black sent me a link to a wonderful YouTube clip of a song called “Trololo!”  to cheer me up. It apparently has been doing the internet rounds in recent weeks but let’s just say it came to me Just At The Right Time.

I can’t even begin to tell you how much I loved this clip.  For one thing, it struck me as being a fairly accurate depiction of how I feel on the inside after I’ve managed to get the kids to school just in the nick of time and thus avoid a late pass. Or, if I’m going to be quite honest, how I must have looked from the outside after a few too many absinthe Flirtinis at Mistress M’s recent 40th.

But mostly, I love it because it stuck in my mind the whole afternoon. So there I was, all “Yaaaah yah yah yaaaah….” and “Trololo Lololololololol!” inside my head the entire hour that I had to wait for the doctor. Yes, my head was a very happy place to be, except when I forgot about my throat and made the mistake of swallowing. But, you can mark my words, I was straight back to internal “ho-ho-ho-ho-HOH!”-ing at the first opportunity.

Still, by the time the doctor saw me, I was ready to feel truly validated by having him step back in an OH. DEAR. GOD fashion when he examined my tonsils, like he’d just stumbled upon a giant hatchery where some alien species were using human beings to incubate their eggs. Not sayin’ that’s what was happening back there in my throat – not necessarily – but MAN, IT WAS SORE.

The doctor, however, was disappointingly calm about his discovery. He merely wrote out a script for my “very inflamed throat” as if he was prescribing a band-aid for a paper cut and sent me on my way. And there I was, $95 poorer from the whole experience, possibly the fore-mother of a Super Bug, never the wiser to why somebody was claiming “Oops I blew myself up!”, still with a throat as sore-as-all-fuck… and yet… strolling casually back to the car, arms swinging and with a “Trololo Lololololololol ha-ha-ha-ha-HA!” in my heart.

Thank you, Mrs Black.