My Health Is No Laughing Matter

I went to see my doctor last week. Again. It’s becoming a regular thing. I go in to the big waiting room and sign in. I sit there for a few minutes and enjoy a February, 1997 Sports Illustrated, and then the nurse calls me to the small waiting room…you know the one with the little tissue-paper-covered bed. And I sit there for about forty-five minutes. Only now there’s nothing to read.
I hate sitting in that sterile little cubicle, with nothing to entertain me. There is a needlepoint on the wall that obviously was done by one of the doctor’s female patients. You know the type…they fall in love with their doctor because, “he’s so kind and patient and…and (sigh) just so wonderful.” And then these obsessed women start applying whatever skill they have in order to show their doctors how crazy (and I do mean crazy) they are about him.
When a woman has no known skills, such as cooking or gardening or sewing, she can always do needlepoint. It’s designed to look like a skill.
My doctor’s needle pointed patient came up with this cutesy little picture entitled, “The Doctor’s Alphabet.” There’s something about that picture that makes me simply want to vomit…even on a good day.
The needlepoint is divided up into 26 boxes. Each box has a letter of the alphabet, and next to it a little squiggly line designed to show the way the doctor is supposed to scribble that letter. By the time I get to “H” I get it. And, it’s not funny. Why would anyone, even someone with no known talent, go to the trouble of needle pointing all 26 letters along with 26 scribblings?
Of course, what does it say about the doctor who would hang something that horrible on his wall. How little must he think of himself and his other patients…the one’s that don’t lie in bed at night and fantasize that their doctor has asked for her hand in marriage.
But, each time I’m confined to the little waiting room I’m reduced to examining that needlepoint. I guess that’s why the doctor calls it the “examining room.”
There are not many other options in that little room. I could weigh myself, but I’d rather go bobbing for needles in the Bio-Hazard waste receptacle than come face to face with my weight. Sometimes I will play with the little hammer. I’ll bang on my knees and watch my feet fly up, but these days my feet don’t fly very high, and that just gives me something else about which to worry. Occasionally I’ll stick a tongue depressor down my throat to see how far I can stick it before I start to gag.
Finally, the nurse comes in and tells me to strip to the waist. I hate that. I especially hate it when the nurse is attractive. I don’t think attractive people should have to look at my body. Ugly people are used to looking at ugly, so I don’t mind that. Besides, they know that if they are thinking how fat and hideous I look, that I could be thinking the same thing about them. We ugly people play a little game. It’s called “You don’t notice how gross I am and I won’t notice how gross you are. Sometimes I cheat, and notice them.
Then after the nurse does my EKG and I practice my typical humor by asking if my heart is still beating, and we both have a good laugh, she leaves me there to get dressed and wait some more for the doctor. Sometimes the doctor will walk past my door. I can hear him talking to the nurses. I think he deliberately stands right outside my door and engages in trivial conversation just to irritate me…you know, to let me know that if he wanted to he could be in the room taking care of my many illnesses. The other day I heard him ask someone to pass him another bottle of Bud. Doctors can be so cruel.
This past visit the doctor finally comes in and proceeds to tell me how poor my condition is. He didn’t look like he was joking. He even let me see the lab results. I don’t think they were joking. That only left one person to tell the jokes. Well, somebody has to do it.
My doctor doesn’t appreciate my humor.
But, fortunately his nurse does. On my way out, I tell her that my doctor asked if I knew a good mortician. The nurse is into that sort of humor. In fact, no joke, she showed me her scrapbook of obituaries of all of the doctor’s dead patients. Somehow, I don’t think that makes for particularly good P.R. for the doctor. But at least we got a good laugh. The nurse and I, anyway. I don’t think my doctor saw the humor.