Open Writing

As the world's financial markets collapsed with the subprime debacle my health suffered a post prime crisis, almost in unison.

The first warning of something amiss was not rising debt or diminishing returns but, rather, a rising of hydrochloric acid as it increasingly returned from my stomach and back up into my oesophagus. This was a resurgence of a negative sort. Various members of the medical profession stuck cameras up my nose and a scope down my throat and informed me that my reflux was being caused by a stomach bacterium known as H-Pylori. Fortunately this was easily cured by a course of combined antibiotics.

Next came a niggling, pulling pain on my right hand side, just above my private sector. Yet another scope, this time in the productivity department, and I was diagnosed with an ovarian cyst. This required an anaesthetic and minor surgery which is euphemistically referred to as "just a procedure, dear" because it is performed through two slits using a laparoscope and puffs of air to separate the various organs.

While I was naturally in some pain afterwards, the worst part by far was a burning cramp caused by the bubbles of air which accumulated like a shaken fizzy drink under my ribs. I could finger them underneath my flesh, like bubble wrap waiting to be popped. When I described this extreme discomfort to a friend who'd recently had his appendix removed he agreed with me by saying, "Yup and the worst part is that you can't even fart them out." I was mildly shocked as everyone knows that this is no way to speak to a lady. Perhaps he was just being a typical male. Perhaps he was just being Australian. Most likely he was just being a typical Australian male. Regardless, he spoke the painful truth.

By the time I went for my six week check up I was having great trouble sitting on my portfolio. I needed to drop an 'n' from what was rapidly becoming my annus horribilis, as this is where my pain had moved to. I had taken to leveraging myself into chairs very gingerly. Off I went to a gastroenterologist. They weren't kidding about the 'enter' bit. He gave my retrospective an appraisal by probating it (and I had previously thought that that examination was only for those of us with testators).

The doctor declared that there was nothing wrong with me and that therefore gluten intolerance must be the cause of my inflationary problems. I was surprised at the speed of this sudden diagnosis and remained unconvinced, especially when others warned me that, in their experience, "a diagnosis of gluten intolerance (unless you have proven coeliac disease) or a spastic colon usually means that they don't have a clue what is wrong."

Still, fearing that I was heading for the glue factory, I decided to give the transformative diet a fair chance and I headed instead for the gluten free bakery. It was here that I discovered why it is called GLU-ten intolerance - everything baked without wheat tastes like sticky glue. I could still partake of my staples- chocolate, wine and hot chips - but little else with anything resembling flavour or substance.
Downsizing began in earnest. As the bottom dropped out of the market, so the bottom dropped off me. Soon I had neither boom nor bust. I lost my endowment policy and my assets began to shrink until my collar and sacral bones stuck out like those of an emaciated Brahman bull.

As the year moved on and the economy began to haemorrhage, so did I. I awoke one morning to this dreadful moaning sound. As I doubled over in excruciating pain, I realised that the sound was coming from me. I was teetering on the edge of default, threatening to be a shorter term investment than my husband had originally envisaged. I was rushed to hospital, put into one of those semi private gowns with a partial lookback option and given yet another scope. At this rate I was accumulating scopes faster than a fleet of German u-boats.

A second cyst, the size of a tennis ball, had grown and attached itself to other vital organs, going global and causing extensive collateral damage. Like so many neoclassically deluded economists, I was discovering that not all growth is good growth and that some urgent intervention was required. The Head of Operations was hastily summoned to perform an internal audit and surgically remove any gross settlements, disused stock or penny dreadfuls.

I eventually came round to find myself lying on one of those blue, rustling, sticky plastic sheets, a bit like those blood absorbers placed in the bottom of meat trays at the supermarket. Every hour through the night a nurse would come in, take my blood pressure and my temperature. She pounced on my sole remaining, unprobed orifice. These days nurses take your temperature by shoving a thermometer into your ear and roughly wrenching it out again. If you don't have earache when you are first admitted into hospital then you are guaranteed to have it by the time that you are discharged.

In the morning the nurses' aide came to give me a bed bath. I realised straight away, from the manner of her speech, that she was deaf - stone deaf, as it turned out. She took one look at my blood soaked adhesive dressings and, without warning, yanked them straight off, giving no consideration to the fact that they were attached to the public shares in my hedge fund. I yelled and grabbed on to her arm to stop her but, in a private room with a deaf nurses' aide, no-one hears you scream. I would either have to accept my involuntary Brazilian or pay a visit to the local merkin shop. I've seen them here in Sydney. Go-Lo, I think they are called.

After this incident I was quick to use my escape clause, phoning my husband and insisting that he take me home immediately.

As news of the collapse of the subsidiary became more widely disclosed, the head honcho, my mother, was plucked from semi-retirement and flown in on the next plane from London. She arrived to help with the domestic economy and to maintain the constitutional feeding operation, which also enabled the managing director of credit to return to work. He needed to in order to cover the costs involved in his wife's unscheduled long service leave.

The only advantage to all of this is that I was able to embark on an extensive expansion strategy once I'd recovered and for a year it was real capital as I ate heartily to gain weight.

Let's keep all of our major indices NYSE-ly crossed that neither the world economy nor I fall back into a double-dip regression.