Principal Celestia nervously made her way down the labyrinthine maze of hallways, glancing at the room numbers and bronze placards bearing names and occasionally unpronounceably -long medical titles.
209: Dr. Gregory Hoarse, Otolaryngologist.
210: Dr. Caballero, Gynecologist.
241: Dr. Heartstrings, Orthopedics
Wait… where did 211 to 240 go? Where the heck is room 227?
Grimacing, Principal Celestia stared down at the small note her secretary had written her. Dr. Whooves, room 227, Canterlot General Hospital, 1:45pm. A time which was rapidly approaching as she continued to try to navigate the rat’s maze that was the hospital itself.
Principal Celestia didn’t necessarily have anything against hospitals or Doctors, but her nerves had been creeping up on her as 1:45pm approached. She couldn’t remember the last time she had gone to see a doctor. Even working in a school, she’d miraculously managed to avoid the coughs, colds and flus which routinely swept through the unwashed masses that were her students. She’d always simply attributed that to lots of exercise and a good diet filled with roughage.
But recently she’d been having problems she’d never faced before, one of which had finally driven her to request her secretary make this appointment.
After turning down three more hallways and through a cafeteria she was sure wasn’t on the map she’d seen at the entrance, Principal Celestia finally found her way to the door to room 227 and stepped inside.
“Hello ma’am,” the receptionist greeted her in a perky voice. “Can I help you?”
“Yes, my name is Celestia and I have an appointment with Dr. Whooves at 1:45.”
Quick typing and scrolling soon followed before the secretary turned back to her and smiled, retrieving a clipboard and pen. “Ah, here we are. Excellent. It says here this is your first visit with us. Please take this form and fill it out to the best of your ability, and I’ll let Dr. Whooves know you’re here.”
Principal Celestia nodded and took the clipboard and sat down, quickly glancing over it. She’d become quite adept at filling out forms, as any administrator would, and rapidly scrawled through it until she hit one particular section: Current symptoms.
Slowly, Principal Celestia placed pen to paper.
Knee pain.
Lower back pain.
Dizziness.
Lightheadedness.
Exhaustion.
Difficulty balancing.
Headaches.
The next section caused her even more of a start: Family History.
She debated for a moment and didn’t think it would be of any relevance to her current situation, but she also knew she needed to be truthful. At least she knew medical records were confidential.
Sister suffered from temporary stress-related psychological instability.
Finally she finished off the rest of the form, handed it back to the receptionist with a forced smile, and waited. Thankfully it wasn’t long before a lanky, spiked-haired gentleman emerged from the door on the opposite side.
Relieving the receptionist of the form she’d just filled out, Dr. Whooves glanced down at it. “Mrs. Celestia, is it? Hello, I’m Dr. Whooves. If you’ll follow me into exam room 1, we’ll see if we can’t get to the root of your issue.”
Principal Celestia nodded and slowly stood up, the doctor’s eyes briefly going wide.
“Wow, you’re quite tall, aren’t you Mrs. Celestia?”
“Oh, it’s just Miss Celestia. Am I? I’ve honestly never given it much thought. I’m surrounded by young students every day so I’m just used to looking out over everyone’s head already.”
Doctor Whooves nodded and motioned for her to follow. “I see. Well, it says here you’ve been having pain, dizziness, some balance issues… first why don’t you tell me a little about when this began?”
Celestia thought back a little and shrugged. “I’d have to say a month ago. At first I thought I was just tired but it’s been happening more frequently of late.”
“And do you have any idea what might have triggered it? Has anything of note happened of late that you might associate with it?”
“Well, a month ago there was an… incident with one of the students at the school which caused me quite a bit of trouble. I had to run around and deal with quite a lot of fallout from that.”
Dr. Whooves nodded in acknowledgement, motioning for her to take a seat on the exam table and began a quick series of knee- and leg-motion, and reflex tests. Those completed, he wrote a series of notes, then retrieved a stethoscope and began to listen to her heart.
“Do you have any idea what could be causing this, Doctor? The school depends on me quite a bit and I’d hate to find out this is something really serious…”
Dr. Whooves pulled away from her and glanced down at his notes. “Well, I’d like to order some blood tests and perhaps some X-rays to rule a few things out, but I do have a theory. You must have realized you have much longer legs than the average woman, correct?”
Blinking, Celestia stared at him in surprise. “Really? I hadn’t noticed. I mean sure, I’ve caught some of the male students staring, but with their hormones they’ll worship any woman they come across like royalty.”
“Well, just from looking at you, I can tell your legs are substantially longer in proportion to your body than the average. Let me give you an example: If you were a horse, you’d probably be two or three times as tall as all of the other horses.”
Eyes wide, Celestia couldn’t think of a way to respond to such a comment.
“Do you know if this condition runs in your family? Any past medical history of leg dismorphia or leg-related complications?”
“Not that I can recall, but my sister did have a pretty big growth spurt after returning from a long trip recently.”
Dr. Whooves hummed to himself as he wrote further notes “Well, since your sister may suffer from it too, then it’s possibly genetic. Society may say that women with longer legs are more attractive, but I’m worried that since your legs are so much longer than normal, they may be forcing your heart to work harder than it should and thus causing the lightheadedness, dizziness and balance issues. The stress on your joints, your knees in particular, from having to manage such large legs may be what’s causing the joint pain. Unfortunately if that’s the case there’s not really much we can do. Normally I’d be quite concerned about your heart, and I’ll order an EKG just to be sure, but I’m going to hazard a guess that since you’re already a mature woman and this condition hasn’t surfaced before, that your heart is likely not in any immediate danger.”
Principal Celestia just nodded, trying to take this all in.
“Unfortunately we can’t just magically alter your body’s appendages to ease the burden on your joints and heart. Well, okay, amputation is possible but I’d only recommend it for healthy leg tissue if it was a truly dire medical emergency.”
“So what can I do, Doctor? This never used to happen to me and I have so much work to do. I have all of my little students to watch over.”
Dr. Whooves frowned, lost in thought, before finally clearing his throat. “I suspect this issue has been triggered by the stress you’ve been under of late. You mentioned having to run around a lot to manage things after that incident a month ago. How about this: We’ll still do all of the tests I recommended just to be sure there’s no other underlying situation. I’ll write you out a prescription for an anti-inflammatory that should help with your joints. As for your heart, though, I’d suggest taking it a little easier though. Try to reduce the amount of time you have to remain standing. At the very least you should try lowering how much stress you put yourself under.”
“I can’t do that, I’m a school principal. Stress comes with the job. That incident last month left our entire front entrance destroyed! It took two weeks just to get that huge hole in the front yard filled in!” Principal Celestia exclaimed, her right eye twitching slightly.
“Yes, I recall reading something about that in the papers. I’m glad there were no serious injuries. Even so, surely you can delegate some of the more difficult tasks. To your sister perhaps? She’s the vice principal, right?”
“No, that would be terrible. She was gone for so long she’s still adjusting to her current position. I couldn’t put her under more pressure when she’s still trying so hard to get used to being back. As it is, all the stress she’s under now is causing her to have trouble not randomly yelling at everyone!”
Dr. Whooves shifted a little in his seat and thought for a moment more. “Well, perhaps some of the other teachers could help you out?”
“I’ve thought of mandating extra hours but that would just unleash chaos,” Celestia replied with a grimace.
“Perhaps offer increased pay in exchange? Less stick, more carrot?”
Celestia’s frown deepened. “Surely you’ve heard of the budget issues we’ve had since the city decided to cut education funding? And that’s notwithstanding the cost of having to fix up the school façade. The teachers are already overworked…”
“Yes, well, I’m sorry to say but you really need to focus on your health more, Miss Celestia. You need to find some sort of a solution…”
Suddenly a wide grin spread across the principal’s face. “Oh! Oooooooooh! What if I took a small group, maybe a half-dozen students and empowered them to handle some of the issues I normally deal with? I’d have to keep an eye on them, of course, and have them send me weekly reports of any important activity, but they could help reduce the workload, or at least the amount of time I need to run around chasing down problems. Yes… Yes! I could gather a group of trustworthy students and use them to help me maintain harmony in the school.”
“Well, there you go, Miss Celestia! I’m sure that will work out just fine. I’ll write you out that prescription now and we can schedule those tests. In the mean time, let’s discuss your bill….”
