I don’t do doctors. Much to Chantelle’s chagrin of course. I really only drag myself there if I absolutely, absolutely have to – and even then that seldom happens! Of course this does mean that I don’t yet have a house doctor here in Gordon’s Bay, despite having lived in the town for almost two years now!
This dilemma has now however been solved for me – and I wasn’t even sick.
Now that I have a house in my name, the bank kind of feels rather insecure should something rather unforseen happen to poor old me, and so they kindly requested that I take out some form of life insurance. Of course, I could flat out refuse, but seeing as they were so nice as to loan me all that money and because one has to now think of one’s unborn child and wife should something terrible happen, I agreed to their request and set off for a couple of consultations with the ABSA-appointed financial advisor, Pierre Fouche.
I struck it off with Pierre and like the man despite the fact he is trying to get me to part with my money and so we initially tried to apply for a life insurance scheme from the professionals only PPS. Unfortunately for me though, they obviously don’t believe a Bachelor of Business Science (Computer Science) degree is professional enough (plus the fact that my BMI is quite far above their liking).
So next on the list of possibles is a Cobalt plan from Sanlam, a company for which my father devoted many years of his life to and one to which I don’t really harbour any hard feelings towards, even if they haven’t delivered a good television advert in absolute ages now.
But they need something from me in order to consider signing me up. A medical check-up conducted by a real doctor.
Fantastic.
So I asked about and Doctor Smit’s name kept on coming up favourably in terms of good doctor practices here in Gordon’s Bay. Of course I should have considered him right from the start based on the fact that I currently train in the Funakoshi karate style under him and his wife, Sensei Birgitt, but wanting to keep the two separate I wasn’t really convinced.
But my hand now forced, I needed to put someone’s name down on the forms and so I put down Doctor Gert Smit.
Monday was the big day and while I was expecting something, well I guess more big, it turned out that the medical really is as simple as having your height taken, a couple of measurements about the waist, some breathing in and out, the obligatory blood pressure test, the drawing of some blood to be sent off to the pathologist, and of course the great big pee in a cup even if you don’t want to test.
In other words, it wasn’t painful, it was over pretty quick (apart from the initial wait for Doctor Gert because he was running late) and I didn’t actually learn anything new about my current state of health – something I always dread when going to the doctor.
But as per usual there was a lot of paperwork to be filled out and signed upon. Not that I’m moaning of course. Looking forward to hearing whether or not Sanlam will take me under their wing, thus getting ABSA off my back about the whole life insurance thing, and more importantly, it turns out that in the process I’ve discovered a pretty damn awesome doctor, one who the Lotter family will definitely be making their home GP! :)