Sickness and doctors

Poor A has been in bed with a horrible flu for about a week and a half - fevers and cold sweats and feeling lightheaded and vomiting... Everything that can go wrong with a person's body, it seems, has! He's passed a much milder (thankfully!) form on to me, so I've been off work too for the last couple of days, mostly in bed, or lying on the couch reading.

We both went to our separate doctors the other day, he for his flu and I... well, for different reasons. He got sent away with instructions to rest and drink plenty of fluids, and I got referred to the mental health department. They're going to assess me for bipolar disorder. I'm pretty much scared out of my mind by this prospect. When I was younger, I thought it might be quite exciting to have a mental illness. Mark you out as kind of special and maybe a little mysterious, y'know? But now that it could actually happen, I'm terrified!

I looked up the symptoms online, largely to set my mind at rest that this couldn't possibly apply to me, and it had the opposite effect. When I saw 'clang associations' on the list - grouping words together based on their sounds rather than on their meanings - I almost laughed out loud. I have pages and pages of paper covered in meaningless scrawls like "demonym noumenon mnemonic demonic.. yemen lemon... a contrivance alliance, compliant and silent...fate sate berate flocculate...imputed reputed refuted uprooted...accolade calvalcade hand grenade...loitered the daughter her goiter to slaughter...jocular jugular..." I didn't think this was a 'symptom' though, I think it's more of a personal quirk. Sometimes people find it a little weird when I respond to a question using a random set of words that rhyme with the one I actually mean, but it's harmless, right?

Anyway, the doctor gave me this questionnaire to fill out. I brought it home with me and sat on our living room floor ridiculing the questions while A pointed out to me very gently that I do actually do a number of the things on the list. I have to call them to make a further appointment...

Procrastinating much?