I had my medical checkup today and I am pleased to report it didn't involve the doctor's-finger-up-the-butt bowel-cancer-check routine reported in so many other accounts. I had a 12-lead ECG, then a standard procedure of height/weight/waist measurements, urine test, sight test, those cool Ishihara colour blindness plates, and then they took four vials of blood from my arm. They'll get sent away to test for hepatitis and AIDS and so on; I was interested to find out I had to sign a consent form to get tested for HIV but not for anything else. Apparently you have a moral right to ignorance as to whether you've got AIDS, but not for other diseases. The nurse complemented me on my nice veins and the nice colour of my blood. I thanked her cheerily; I was still excited at the strange sensation of seeing my blood on the outside. You kind of forget you have all that stuff in you.

After all that, the nurse passed me onto the doctor (another really cool woman; all the other medicals I've had to do have been with cranky, bored male doctors so this was a nice change). She got me to bend to the left, bend to the right, touch my toes, say 'ah', breathe in and out through the mouth, let my stomach get poked a bit, jerk my knees, close my eyes and try to balance, and that was it. If I was going down over winter I'd have to get a pap smear and mammogram but luckily the most major check-up I have to get is dental.

I've got to make myself a few more appointments at other medical centres: firstly for a chest X-ray, and then for a Mantoux-Heaf test at the John Hunter Hospital - that one involves going in on Tuesday so they can inject some goop into the skin on your arm, and then rocking up on Friday to see if you're in pain or not. If yes, you've been exposed to tuberculosis at some stage of your life. If no, you're fine.

And then there's the mysterious six-hour psychology test in Sydney on Thursday (8 am start in the middle of the city -- getting there on time and awake is probably part of the test). I asked Angela from the AAD what it involved and whether it had a name, and she was vague without, however, seeming cagey; all she would say was that it involved a written part and an interview and that as far as she knew it wasn't the British Army one. Rest assured that as soon as I'm through it I'll divulge all their secrets here on the blog.

The overwhelming sensation after the medical was the novelty of having my body the subject of scientific tests. I'm so used to hooking cables up to inanimate objects (antennas, waveguides, oscilloscopes, blah blah) that it felt strange having electrical leads plugged onto my skin for the ECG. It was almost an out-of-body experience; I felt acutely aware of my body as a machine that I lug around and don't really understand. I changed from subject to object.