Note to Self: At the mercy of the 'tooth sucking brigade'

A very weird thing happened to my sister this weekend.

She’d been to the doctors to get her first jabs for an upcoming trip to India, and had a very bizarre allergic reaction. Within hours of having the injections, she started to lose the use of her lower legs and her knees and ankles swelled up so that she could hardly walk. Clearly this was very scary and a hasty re-visit to the doctors was arranged. Strong pain-killers and anti-inflammatory pills were prescribed but the doctor had never heard of any reaction like this and was, quite frankly, completely flummoxed (not sure whether that is a medical term or not).

Now, I’m not telling you this so that you give her loads of sympathy. (To be honest she’s had enough of that and I don’t want her milking it.) Three days on and she’s virtually back to normal thank goodness. But actually it really got me thinking about how trusting we are when we go to the doctors. We have to put our faith completely in another human being that they will make the right diagnosis and subsequent treatment decision. Sadly we hear of all too many stories about things going wrong within the medical profession, but that’s the subject for another column altogether.

Nonetheless, what this incident also did was make me think more about how often in our daily lives we have to trust people we don’t know. Along with doctors and dentists (do I really need that filling when I don’t have any toothache?), the obvious ones are what my grandmother used to call the ‘tooth sucking brigade’ ie anyone who takes that sharp intake of breath through their teeth and then comes out with the immortal line ‘I’m afraid this doesn’t look good’. These people can be looking at anything from your car, to your laptop to your entire household plumbing system and we are at their mercy.

The thing is, unless we have any substantial knowledge in the particular field in which we have the problem, we have to trust and believe someone else to diagnose and charge appropriately. I am (you may not be surprised to hear) neither a mechanic nor a plumber and I am, when it comes to gadgets and laptops, a technical idiot. Therefore I have been known to go into something of a panic when something goes wrong, and I’m sure I’m not the only one. It’s not only the fear of how much repairing the old or buying the new is going to cost me, but more about someone potentially ripping me off because of my lack of knowledge.

Of course this does happen to all of us and what we have to try to do is build a catalogue of recommended garages, retailers and tradesmen so that we hope we’re getting best advice and good value for money.

However there’s always some new trust issue to bring out the anxiety in me and my current one is finding somewhere for my 12 year old to have her ears pierced. I have promised that she can have them done this summer holiday and am now dreading the time when I have to make the decision on who I will entrust to literally hold a gun to my child’s head. Much research is being done, both online and in person, but there are equally good and bad experiences of most places who offer this service.

But Molly is adamant and though I have told her how painful it is, she is desperate for someone to shoot metal through her flesh. It’s not the fact of the piercing itself, it’s just about having faith in the person doing it. What if they miss her ear? What if the hole is wonky? What if the equipment isn’t sterilised properly and she gets infected and her ear falls off? OK I know I’m being a little neurotic now, and of course I will make a decision and trust someone enough to let Molly enjoy this girlie rite of passage. But if there are any tears on that day, I bet they’ll be flowing from me and not from her.

So I suppose we just have to trust people in all areas of life. We have to accept that there are things we can never know about or understand and we have to have utter faith in other people who have that knowledge. Sometimes though, it can be a little difficult can’t it?

NOTE TO SELF: JM Barrie said ‘All the world is made of faith, and trust and pixie dust’. Think I’d like to try the pixie dust from now on.