At the age of 59 I thought it was time to get my body thoroughly examined. So last week I trotted off to a health clinic in west London. Not surprisingly, I got a mixed report. Mostly As and Bs, a couple of Ds, and several must-try-harders.
The health check consisted of an hour with a man in green hospital scrubs, who I think was a nurse, followed by an hour with a female doctor. It was all trundling along nicely – my weight and BMI were both within the ‘healthy’ range – when something unexpected happened. After attaching electrodes to my body for the purposes of carrying out an ECG, the nurse asked me if I was pregnant.
‘I’m sorry?’
‘Are you pregnant?’ he repeated.
I’d read an article in the Daily Mail about a 66-year-old man being turned away by a blood bank after he refused to answer that question, but I wasn’t expecting to be asked it myself.
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