Sweating with fear, I waited to hear the doctor’s verdict. Then the radio started playing Call Me Maybe … | Nell Frizzell

I'm all for a bit of distraction in a tense medical situation, but who on earth picks those tunes?

It's quite something to be sitting on a lime-green, wipe-clean chair, your tongue pinned to the roof of your mouth by fear, strangers in scrubs walking past briskly every few minutes, while Firework by Katy Perry pours out of a portable radio with the sound quality you might expect to find at the bottom of a crisp packet.

This week, I spent an hour in a medical waiting room in a funk of uncertainty. My soaked poncho hung over a nearby door; a woman behind me read a book in Spanish; someone knitted in the corner. Weaving us all together were the tinfoil-on-a-filling beats of commercial radio. Call Me Maybe by Carly Rae Jepsen as I stared out of the window at a climbing frame and felt the sweat between my breasts. Dance With Me Tonight by Olly Murs while being shown to the toilet to give a urine sample. Torn by Natalie Imbruglia as the person behind me was called into their appointment.