I’ve mentioned before that I read. A lot. The beloved is concerned that Titch and Boofer could spontaneously combust and the house could fall down whilst I sit, oblivious, with my head in a book/blog. But oh! the entertainment to be had. Unsurprisingly, I could go on and on. But to be brief, just read Filing Jointly…finally. You will laugh.

The other day I wrote something and the lovely Lauren of Filing Jointly commented. And when I was done flapping my hands with excitement that someone I don’t live with was reading my blog, I realised I had a burning need to tell her all about how she was inadvertently responsible for the BLF thinking that someone was threatening to kill her. Off I went to comment on her post and Blogger kept eating my comment. Probably because my comment was absurdly long. Or because Blogger doesn’t like me. One of the two. So I decided to dedicate this post to her instead.

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Dear Lauren,

First, some background: in Australia we have this 24 hr hotline called Nurse On Call*, which is exactly what it sounds like. You can call nurses and ask them things. Obviously, probably for insurance purposes, they mainly have to categorise callers into ‘Dying – Give Up Now’, ‘May Be Dying Soon – Go Straight To Hospital’, ‘Quite Bad, But Not Dying – See Your GP In The Morning (because you can be sure most of these calls are at 3am)’, ‘Insane and Dying – See Above’, ‘Insane But Not Dying’ and ‘Bored’. They can’t actually give much in the way of concrete advice, because if someone has an allergic reaction to a bandaid, the nurses would undoubtedly get sued.

Anyhow, the truly sensible hypochondriac will have a best friend who is also a Nurse. Then they have their Very Own Nurse On Call (VONOC), who will most likely be willing to give them all kinds of diagnoses and advice. They’re also usually happy to accept text-messaged pictures of rashes and injuries to diagnose. My BLF (best lawyer friend) is a sensible hypochondriac. As her designated VONOC, I cannot count the number of messages I have received of distant, blurry limbs, entitled things like ‘Is this a DVT?’ or ‘how long does it take to lose a foot to leprosy?’ In the early days of being VONOC for the BLF I was more practical in my responses. Now I just respond with things like ‘not leprosy, but probably gangrene, I give it ten days, what sort of prosthetic foot would you get?’

And then I read this post and saw the journal and thought ‘Yes! Perfect!’ and other such positive things. And being as I was already using my work admin hours to read your blog (frankly, a far better use of my time – no one wants a bored, glum midwife, they want a happy, entertained one, yes?), I thought ‘what’s a bit more time spent on Amazon?’ So I ordered the journal and painstakingly filled out the ‘gift card message’ part with something like ‘just fill this in and submit it to me at the end of the financial year’ and had it shipped to the BLF. Who received it. Minus gift message. Having received a blank parcel, and only really taking in the ‘I’m going to die’ part, and being a sensible hypochondriac, her immediate thought was ‘this is definitely a death threat’ and she called one of her own Professional Friends to see what to do next.

Some time later, she rifled through all the packaging and found the receipt, which listed my mobile number. And then she understood. Although she was still a little concerned that I might be sending her a death threat.

Did I mention that I love your blog?

Lots of blog love from afar,
The VONOC

*I don’t know if they accept international calls. Or what their feelings are regarding cheese intake.