Let's Do

I visited my doctor yesterday for a routine checkup. All right, visited may not be quite the right word. It's isn't like we threw steaks on the grill and hoisted a few, you know.

"You haven't had a tetanus shot in awhile. Let's get a tetanus shot," the Doc told me.

He talks like that when he thinks I need something, but he never joins me. 'Let's see a cardiologist' or 'Let's go get four quarts of blood drawn' or 'Let's get bonked on the head with a mallet' he'll say. Yet it's always only me.

I didn't mind so much until the mallet thing. 

Say What?

I spent about ten minutes on the phone yesterday, rescheduling a routine checkup with my geriatric specialist. Geriatric specialist? In simpler terms, an old guy doctor. 

The ten minute wait was all right. Indeed it was less than I expected. A couple of times a voice broke in offering a call back (without losing my place in the queue) rather than further time on hold. I didn't want to risk that. With my luck, as I was using my business phone as a personal line (I'm the boss, I can do it) I feared being caught on another call. 

What concerned me was hearing what I thought I must have heard wrong, but sure sounded right. The disembodied computer voice said, "If you would like to continue to hold, we will take your call when it is convenient to us."

They meant, in the order it was received. They must have, right? It would be pretty blatant to say what I thought they said, the old saying the quiet part out loud. I'm sure I heard it wrong.

So while I'm at it, perhaps I should make an appointment for a hearing aid too.

Athletic Pulse

Doctors. They all presumably have, if not the same then similar training, and access to pretty much the same information. Yet they draw different conclusions. What's up with that?

My pulse has always been on the low side, hovering around 48, 49, 50 beats per minute. It's been that way all my life, so far as I recall. My old doctor was okay with that, but out of curiously I asked when we should be concerned. "If it's regularly at 40 or below," he explained. So, all right. I'm all right.

Yet that physician retired, and I transferred to a doctor he recommended. He seems like a good guy too. But when my heartbeat was 48 last month he did the old slow head shake tsk tsk. "What's wrong?" I asked.

"Oh, 48, that's too low. Unless you're an athlete?" He queried.

Even I laughed out loud at that, as did most of you. Don't deny it. "Well, are you?" He persisted.

"No. I walk 45 - 50 minutes most days, a brisk walk mind you, but I'm no athlete."

The Doc har-umphed. "We must keep an eye on that." He assured me I'm in no danger, yet he let slip the word 'pacemaker'. "If this keeps up, at some point we'll have to consider it."

Be all that as it may, why is one physician unconcerned with a pulse of 48 and the next one, a colleague of the one who retired, tsk tsking me?

I don't get it. But I'm not a doctor. I'm also not an athlete.

A Medical Opinion

As I sat tying my shoes across the examination room from my doctor yesterday I asked, "So, Doc, what's the verdict?"

"You're old and fat," he answered.

I responded, "I get told that for free a dozen times a day. Why do I have to pay a $320 office visit to hear it from you?"

"To make it official," he explained gruffly.

My doctor never did and never would have put it that way. My manner of interpreting the conversation is simply funnier. Oh, he definitely said I was old and fat, in so many words. But he was much more diplomatic and charitable, properly mixing in all the old saws about continuing to exercise and eating better (and less), cushioned in the right sense of calm urgency. 

Perhaps that's why it's $320 for the office visit. I believe most of us would measure our words much more carefully for that kind of money.

Don't tell if asked

Ninety five percent of the time, if not ninety eight, I'm fine. Really. I can nearly always function at work and at home, lifting and moving things as required. But the affects of aging are still there.

Yesterday for example I spent most of the day with my hip bothering me enough that I was indeed having trouble functioning. I sat a lot, stretched out on the couch or the bed a lot. No amount of ibuprofen seemed to help. I simply had to resign myself to hip pain until it decided to alleviate itself.

Yet that's not the worst part of it. The worst part is knowing that in about nine years I'll need to have that hip replaced. I wouldn't know that if I hadn't been stupid enough to mention to my doctor about a year ago that my hip hurt.

You know how that goes. You're just in for a regular, routine checkup and he asks how you are. "Well, my hip bugs me a bit doc," you answer. So after about five minutes of stretching and manipulation he says, "I'm thinking you're about ten years from a hip replacement."

Thanks Doc. That means that every time that my hip hurts like yesterday I think things along the lines of, well, one year of that ten years is past. It's something to look forward to I suppose. But the next time I see him, at my regular scheduled exam in April 2020, and he asks 'How are you Mr. Cosgriff?' unless I am experiencing crushing chest pain or the like, I will simply answer, fine.

Dr. Cloyce

Dad's doctor, whom I'll call Dr. Cloyce just to give him a name, one day walked into the examination room where Pops waited for him. Dr. Cloyce was looking down. "Why so glum, Doc?" the old man asked.

"Oh, my wife and I had a little spat last night," He replied. "I arrived home from a long day at the office and she immediately went into an unending diatribe on her day. She went on and on and I just stood there staring at her. Finally she asked, well, are you going to say anything?"

'In a minute, I replied," said Dr. Cloyce. "I first have to determine the important from the unimportant information." He looked at Dad and said, "Not a smart thing to say to your wife, Bill."

"I imagine not," Pops laughed.

120/70

120/70. Man, them are some good numbers.

This morning I had my regular checkup with my regular doctor and I think those numbers tell it all.

120/70.

My blood pressure as of 8 O'clock this morning.

To say I'm pleased is understatement. Sublime understatement. It hasn't been that low since high school. Even then, I seemed to have the opposite problem. For my senior year physical it was 101/59; the doc then was concerned that maybe it was too low.

But now - contented sigh - 120/70.

Oh, I've somehow gained three pounds since June, and my pulse (48bpm) is a bit low. The Doctor chided me over those factoids. They have to complain about something, you know. I know how I gained the weight too: I have not in the least bit watched what I eat in the last few months. But for now...

120/70. I think I'll make it my mantra.