I can remember be 18, and up to that age going to the doctors most reluctantly. Mother would insist that if I had to go, then she had to take me, and be with me during the consultation. I should not be allowed to see the doctor on my own. When she did not want to go, then neither of us went. She was born in the era before the NHS was founded. She only sought the doctor long after she needed to see him - locally every doctor was male, even in the 1970s. By the time she went her reason for going had become close to accute, making the visit, desperate. An emergency.
Apparently my hearing was normal, that is nobody asked me about it. But for years the working class way of anyone getting wax out of their ears was to prod the ear with the non phosphotrus end of a matchstick*, unable to see the effect that such prodding had, and only stopping at any sign of blood on the matchstick, which rarely happened, thankfully.
Aged 18 I made my first apointment to have my ears checked by Dr Ward, a doctor I had little cause to have faith in. But then I had only ever seen him with Mother. I knew Dad was technically registered with the doctor, but we never knew for sure because he never made any appointment to see the doctor. He must have been registered since once the doctor saw him at home. When I was 16 and Dad was 43 Mother called the doctor out to see Dad. He had been laid up in bed for a few days, his meals brought up to him and the dishes taken away. He was too ill to go to work, much less to maintain the vice of his choice, the pub. The message that was distantly relayed to his family was that, for him having only one lung, he had better give up smoking the roll up cigarettes he had been smoking for thirty years. Passive smoking via being in smoke-laden room had not yet been discovered, or described. He took up passive smoking, whilst actively drinking, in the pub with renewed relish when he finally felt fit enough get out of bed. Only he knew what the doctor said, and what his medicine was...
But to get back to my own business, I got to the appointment with Doctor Ward and he examined my ears and found plenty of wax worth removing there, and prescribed the ear wax softening treatment for me to apply twice a day, and gave me the date of the appointment with the nurse. Maybe a fortnight later I returned. She filled the metal cylinder of the syringe with warm water placed the kidney shaped bowl under the ear, and took her time. For a procedure that was beng done for the first time I was astonshed at the volume of wax that fell into the metal kidney shaped bowl. And I was pleased that I now knew the difference between hearing and not hearing: people did not have to raise their voices as much. I was also pleased because I had been able to ask for the examination on my own.
There were many other matters where my understanding was blocked by the language my family used to explain things, and where my experience of social class, contributed to my part in the collective misundersanding of life, where the right question to ask was the hardest to phrase, and then deliver and get an anwer for. But hearing and looking after my hearing better was a good start.
My mother is still alive, now aged 91, and for all I know still has her allotment for growing vegetables. I am better off not asking what goes on there. My father lost his job when the factory that he worked in - the biggest employer in the town by quite a large number - closed, soon after he retuerned to work. He was never offered another job, and made propping up the pub with the best of his health his life's work for nearly thirty years more, before his declining health made him give that up when he was 74. He died soon after, which meant I lost my chance to ask whether he liked being in the pub as much, more, or less, when the pubs severly reduced the amount of passive smoking inside, by making drinkers smoke outside, under improvised shelters.
I now live far from my birth family. on my own. I have a good relatiosnhip with the modern health service, with all the data it collects, and preventative medicine ethos it applies to my life. I have that because I can, and because I live more healthily than my parents ever prepared me for - I even enjoy hearing my own tinnitus - something they would never have thought to prepared me for enjoying.
*Bryant and May were the brand of matches of choice in the parental house, because they were the only brand to put on the back of them what are now called 'dad jokes'. Sample: Son, doing his home work, 'Dad where are the Himilayas?' Dad in reply 'I don't know. Ask your mother, she is the one who puts everything away.'.
