Fair warning: this is wicked gross

Oh, hair removal. It's all fun and games until someone loses a leg.

Okay, full disclosure, I probably won't lose the leg. I am, however, on freaking penicillin. I don't know why that sounds more frightening than the three other antibiotics I've been on this year, but I am suspicious of the fact that, since I started taking it, I have developed an ear infection. Sure, it might be a coincidence - or I might be breeding my very own superbug. I might have MRSA of the ear.

So I went to see my doctor to say, Hey, check this out! He spent twenty seconds looking at the leg and five minutes poking at self-harm scars on my left arm. Sure, I have a gigantic lump on my leg which has made it literally almost impossible for me to walk; I have a severe fever, and pus is running onto the surgery carpet, but let's talk about how my depression expressed itself TEN FUCKING YEARS AGO.

And yes, it was the artist known on these pages as Dr. Dickface McBullyo. I have learnt from the practice's website that he specialises in mental illness. Which would explain why he takes every appointment I make - to discuss exhaustion, or abnormal heart rhythms, or massively infected ingrown hairs - as an opportunity to tell me off for still being mad.

It does not explain, however, why he seems to know absolutely fuck all about the actual lived experience of people with depression. Or why he seems to think that jabbing at decade-old scars is going to prompt me to magically get better.