oh-my-goshscopy!

On Monday evening we were at the Kitchen Garden Cafe in Kings Heath, celebrating Jenny's 60th birthday. It was great to see a lot of friends some of whom have not been part of the regular round of walking, visiting and tea-quaffing - and others who have. This was an extremely potent mix of hugging and warmth from both men and women. But it's the women who make sustained and unselfconscious contact through embracing and the holding of hands. At times like these it feels as though I have attained some special status - that I have been invited into a female world that for men usually hovers somewhere nearby - we sense its presence but it exists in a different dimension.

But don't be misled - it isn't always like this.

I've noticed that as 'cystoscopy day' approached a significant number of women couldn't help themselves - they relished, in a muted but nevertheless, perceptible manner a degree of satisfaction that 'the boot is on the other foot.' I knew what they'd like to say - 'Now, we'll see how you like it when you're subjected to an invasive procedure' or 'What a fuss over an internal examination; during my pregnancy I had, goodness knows how many doctors.............'

What I hadn't bargained for was the number of women involved in administering this procedure at the Queen Elizabeth Hospital. I saw one man throughout my time in the endoscopy department. He was the consultant who having shaken my hand, disappeared from sight leaving me in the hands, literally, of four women, one doctor and three nurses. I resolved to be 'cool'; even while lying prone.

Having rearranged my clothing a nurse placed large paper squares over my exposed body. She then swiftly pulled the centre of one square into a mini peak and tore it to leave a strategically-positioned opening . Like an Inuit over an ice-hole the doctor then went fishing.

I'd expected them to be clinical and 'matter of fact' but I'd also been told in the prep room that it would be 'a very thin' tube that would be inserted into my 'water pipe'. ('Urethra' I'd corrected her - we're all professionals here.)

The instrument was considerably more robust than that which I'd imagined; a shiny black object tapering to a mobile, flexible tube with multi-coloured eye at its tip.

There was certainly no 'foreplay'. I'll spare you the details but suffice to say I was soon watching an image of the coloured tube that is my urethra. I had assumed that the screen above the operating table might have been used for something entertaining like a re-run of the Swansea - Norwich match from the weekend. Nobody looked like they were being entertained though I was making a brave attempt at it. 'Is that filmy tissue in the picture normal?', I asked in what I hoped was a nonchalant voice.

The young doctor commented on the narrowness of my urethra and tried to make her request that someone find the consultant sound perfectly normal. Then after much tentative manipulation and with the help of another nurse she finally managed to make progress and we were looking at the creased walls of my bladder. She cancelled the request to reach the consultant, went on a Cook's tour and concluded that all was well.

The alien one-eyed worm was swiftly removed. Boy, that felt a better. I didn't hang about. With my hospital trousers rapidly hitched up, she detained me long enough to say that there was nothing she could see that was of any concern. If I had further problems I should contact my G.P.

In the recovery bay I exchanged some effortless banter with another male patient before the nurse discharged me with the injunction that I drink lots of water for the following 24 hours. Some hours later my bladder is calming down.

A couple of days earlier the results of my upper spine scan came in. On the phone, the consultant said they were perfectly normal.

So far, in 2012, things have gone pretty well; shrinking nodules, a functioning cervicothoracic spine and a urethra that does undoubtedly lead, eventually, to a bladder. I wonder how many other parts of me can be confirmed as normal?

As for the female cystoscopy team, I'm not saying they enjoy their work exactly but I don't think I would want to be in the canteen when they were sharing some 'down time'.