Hey lady, there aint nothing wrong with me*

I’ve decided I don’t like occupational health nurses.

In the past year Ive been three times for various work related checks. It works like this: I go in, feeling super healthy and carefree. I come out angry with some health worries I could do without. The first time, I had an ‘irregular heart beat’ which I later got checked with a doctor and he said was normal and nothing to worry about. For my new job I've got to go 4 times in my first year and have my lung function tested. This involves blowing down a tube with a little windmill type thing on the end that spins in the air you blow through it. Apparently it measures various aspects of you lung capacity and power.

Ive done this before and I sucked. Not literally, obviously, that would be silly (though possibly more successful) I just couldn’t blow out anywhere near what I should be doing. The nurse had all these graphs and my jaggley little line of puff was always under the smooth dark line of normality. The whole thing blows (sorry, couldn’t resist). The nurse is saying stuff like,

‘Oh that’s not very good’
‘Come on now, really blow!’
‘No. That's poor again. You should probably do some more exercise’

and I'm getting wound up more than the spring in the little windmill thing.

The nurse is hardly Carolina Kluft herself. I go running or cycling or swimming every day. I feel great. I dont, in all honesty believe that there is anything wrong with my lungs. I feel like asking her flabby ass for a race. While I was on holiday last year I held my breath (as you do…in an impromptu competition on a boring boat journey) for 2 minutes 21. I’m a regular in the top three of the annual Beach Olympics competition that me and my friends have. Without wanting to sound like a dick (too late, I know), I'm not happy taking any aerobic advice from anyone who looks like they take the lift up two floors.

This time the machine wouldn’t even work, so Ive got to go back next week.

‘Its OK though’ says the nurse, ‘we can check your glucose problem while you’re here’

Hang on a minute. A glucose ‘Problem?’ Five minutes ago I went into the toilets and struggled to, but eventually successfully urinated into this little pot. The nurse took it away and came back with a little dip stick thing that said I had glucose in my urine, and that this might be an indicator of type 2 diabetes.

Now shes saying I shouldn’t eat so much sugar as it ‘might be using up all my insulin’

To be fair, I have been enjoying the two-for-one offer on ‘Rocky’ chocolate bars (just the right balance of chocolate and biscuit; well worth a go) currently available in my local Sainsburys, and I did step it up to 3 sugars in tea and coffee this year, but a glucose problem?

Im thinking its best to wait for the second test. When I go in this time everything in my pee is gunna be diluted out of sight in 2 litres of Evian before I go in. My supervisor always used to say that all chemical problems can be diluted. We'll see.

Off to see Spiderman 3 tonight; I guess I should lay off the sugary confectionery products.

*Mike Strutter, 1998