I have ongoing stomach issues. Yeah, I know—who doesn’t? But mine are more mysterious than yours, unsolved after years of ultrasounds, endoscopies, super x-rays, probiotics and exotic enzymes delivered by fleets of brilliant gastroenterologists. And they’re getting worse instead of better. Recently, I searched out a new guy in Ocala, highly recommended by other doctors, his practice the shining beacon of gastroenterology in Marion County. Let’s call him Doctor Bob. I went in to see Doctor Bob with high hopes and was greeted by a tall, good-humored man, sixties, very charismatic. Maybe this was the wizard I have been looking for. And, let me tell you, wizards in the gastro field are hard to find.
Conversation with a fellow gymgoer:
Herby: You know, I got a good cancer doctor. Whatever he tells me is right on the money. Never made a mistake with me yet. And my heart doctor? Salt of the earth, great mind, terrific analytical powers, I have full confidence in him. But you know what? I can’t find a stomach man that can tell me a damned thing. It might be this, it might be that, it might be the other thing. You never get any better. I think some of these guys must be ex-taxi drivers who got sick of the hours and went off to medical school in Transnistria. It’s a dilemma.
Bill: So what are you doing now?
Herby: Well, according to my brother-in-law, Arnie….
That’s what it’s come to. You’re on your own in this remote and confusing jungle, like a first-time tourist in the Congo Basin. You’re left to negotiate the trails alone in a dark and foreboding element and whatever path you take could lead to your abrupt demise. Maybe Doctor Bob would be different.
Doctor Bob: Well, if you had anything terrible, you’d be dead by now, so there’s that.
Bill: There are no slow, painful deaths in gastroenterology?
Doctor: Well, a couple. But you’re not even painful. It’s possible that you could have a motility problem in which food moves very slowly—festers, even—in your stomach. That could cause a lot of gas and bloating. One of the problems with that supposition is that your problem is off and on and not consistent. But we’ve got to start somewhere. I’m going to set you up with a Gastric Emptying Study. You go into the hospital, they feed you an egg with nuclear dye painted on it and then observe you for an hour and a half to see how fast your stomach empties. If it’s too slow, well, we have medication for that.
Gee, a new possibility. Who knew your stomach could empty too slow? Shouldn’t the nuns have brought this up in grade school? I made the appointment for two days later at Monroe Regional in Ocala, the people who run the gym. I belong to a deal called Prestige 55 at Monroe. That means, for a slight, once-in-a-lifetime fee, I get cheaper gym membership and a special notice on my room door if I should ever wind up admitted to the hospital. Also, people I have never met in my life will come to my room on a daily basis to try cheering me up. So I feel a certain kinship for Monroe. I feel like they are less likely to accidentally kill me there, me being a valued member of Prestige 55 and all. The appointment people told me to be there at 6:45 a.m., meaning I would be getting up at 5:30, my favorite hour. Then again, that’s when we eat our eggs, right? Early.
We’re Off To The Coxville Zoo
Get up at 5:30 much? Let me tell you about 5:30. It’s extremely dark at 5:30. When you go outside at 5:30, there are wispy little spider-webs everywhere, just waiting to drape themselves all over your head and neck. They are invisible so you will not see them. And they are sticky and not easily gotten rid of. When you are foolish enough to actually drive at 5:30, you will encounter fog and you will see illusions all around you which are strangely remindful of the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria. Stay away from them. Try singing to stay awake. Pretend you are Rod Stewart and sing Some Guys Have All The Luck. If you have a Creedence Clearwater Revival CD, put it on. Play anything. There is no possible way to go to sleep with a Creedence tape on. This has been tested in scientific laboratories and never disproven. Anyway, it works for me. Eventually, it will get a little lighter. Eventually, you’ll get where you’re going.
Whenever you go to a gigantic new place—like a hospital, for instance—they give you directions which are wrong. Oh, it’s so easy, they say, those who have travelled there 56 times and think they’re so smart. Then you go and you discover that somebody’s “easy” is, for you, like circumnavigating one of those giant traffic circles in Guadalajuara. But this time, they were right. It was easy. I found the ramp that I was supposed to pull up on and—guess what—there was a middle-aged woman in a security uniform standing there with a clip board, and—with nobody else around—looking like she was waiting just for me. “NAME?” she wanted to know. “Killeen,” I told her, knowing she wouldn’t have it. I mean, they never have it, do they? Then there’s all kinds of difficult accommodations which must be made before they let you in. “Got it right here,” she said, waving me off to one of the select few parking spaces reserved for important early arrivals such as myself. Maybe it’s another unknown perk of Prestige 55. This was working out swimmingly. Maybe today would not be just another dumb, unproductive day in medicine-land. Maybe it would even be, as Walter Cronkite used to say, a day that alters and illuminates our time. Probably not.
Green Eggs And Ham?
No, not quite. More like one lightly scrambled nuclear egg and bread. The young lady who offered them to me was intent on being thorough. “You’re not allergic to eggs, are you?” she asked. “Well, that would sort of defeat the purpose, right?” I replied. “Do I get anything to drink?” My expansive list of choices were water, milk or orange juice. “You don’t have to eat the bread,” she said, generously. “Are you kidding?” I asked her. "If this is all I get for breakfast, I’m eating everything.”
My server’s name was “Kelsey.” Now, stop right there. The world seems to be awash in these Kelseys and I’m wondering where the hell they all came from. I mean, one day they weren’t here at all, next thing you know they’re everywhere. Before the Kelseys, it was the Tiffanys and the Brittanys. Where did Brittany come from, for crying out loud? Are we paying off some little known debt to England? How do these names happen all at once? Do all the Future Mothers of America get together at some baby-naming fling and set the rules? Does it have anything to do with Oprah? I don’t get it.
Okay, so once you eat your egg, all the fun is over. Now you’ve got to go and lie under what they call a Nuclear Camera for a goddam hour-and-a-half while the infernal device records the happenings in your guts. I can think of reality TV shows that are better fun than this. Okay, maybe not many. Of course, you can sleep. You can if you’re one of those people like Siobhan who could sleep during the riots at Attica. Me, not so good. I mean, there are people coming in and out of the room, discussing their vibrant weekends and munching on delectable pastries, something you can do if you’re young and not restricted to the produce of hens. I lay there for an eternity, not wanting to ask how much time had passed, secure in the knowledge somebody would pipe up, “two minutes”. After several days passed, I finally summoned up the courage to ask the hour. “Only thirty minutes left,” Kelsey chirped, brightly. My heart soared. “How’s it looking over there?” I asked her. “Pretty good,” she said. “Your stomach was emptying as soon as we turned the camera on. Just like it’s supposed to.” Great, I thought. Another blind alley. The doctor didn’t get back with me yet. I don’t think there will be much of use to report. The Odyssey will continue until a horrible life-threatening event occurs, laying bare the long simmering disease. Or until another exciting procedure is concocted and set out for the picnic. I’ll keep plodding along, chasing clues on the Web, self-diagnosing, searching for arcane solutions. Maybe I’ll try one of those Holistic guys. I hear from my friends that they feed you better during testing. And almost none of them are named Kelsey.
Lila, The $6,000 Dog
Well, I don’t want to mislead you. The actual puppy purchase price was only one-tenth of that. But now we need extras. First, we rebuilt the back porch, the better to confine Lila to the immediate Pathogenes area when delivery men were about. Back porch cost: $1600. Then, of course, Siobhan decided we’d better build a new fence down the driveway (one board along the top, wire top to bottom) so that Lila wouldn’t run off while we were on vacation. Cost: $4200. Add in a thoroughly ineffectual dog school experience and you’re over six thou. We’re not counting feed or toys, of course. You can buy a lot of good stuff for $6000. They have pretty, conversational parrots for $6000 and the parrots don’t wake you up barking at 5 a.m. like Lila does. You can train your horse for three months for $6000. You can go to all the amusement parks in the whole world for $6000 and have something left over. I’m not sure we’ve made a sound investment here. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. Maybe some day a devious crew of microscope thieves posing as landscape gardeners will be foiled at the lab door by a snarling, barking Lila. Maybe some day. Gregarious as she is right now, however, if they turn up tomorrow she’ll show them to the keys.
Who’ll Stop The Rain?
Good question. Cosmic Flash was due to work Tuesday morning and, if all went well, repair back to Miami to resume his racing career. But who can work these day on the High Seas of Eisaman Equine’s training center. The newspaper today said we are getting record amounts of rain for July and nobody doubts it. Every day, the monsoons come and the work is put off for another 24 or 48 hours. We’re trying again Saturday. We know those Prestige 55 folks are close to God and we’re hoping they’ll put in a good word.
That’s all, folks
Conversation with a fellow gymgoer:
Herby: You know, I got a good cancer doctor. Whatever he tells me is right on the money. Never made a mistake with me yet. And my heart doctor? Salt of the earth, great mind, terrific analytical powers, I have full confidence in him. But you know what? I can’t find a stomach man that can tell me a damned thing. It might be this, it might be that, it might be the other thing. You never get any better. I think some of these guys must be ex-taxi drivers who got sick of the hours and went off to medical school in Transnistria. It’s a dilemma.
Bill: So what are you doing now?
Herby: Well, according to my brother-in-law, Arnie….
That’s what it’s come to. You’re on your own in this remote and confusing jungle, like a first-time tourist in the Congo Basin. You’re left to negotiate the trails alone in a dark and foreboding element and whatever path you take could lead to your abrupt demise. Maybe Doctor Bob would be different.
Doctor Bob: Well, if you had anything terrible, you’d be dead by now, so there’s that.
Bill: There are no slow, painful deaths in gastroenterology?
Doctor: Well, a couple. But you’re not even painful. It’s possible that you could have a motility problem in which food moves very slowly—festers, even—in your stomach. That could cause a lot of gas and bloating. One of the problems with that supposition is that your problem is off and on and not consistent. But we’ve got to start somewhere. I’m going to set you up with a Gastric Emptying Study. You go into the hospital, they feed you an egg with nuclear dye painted on it and then observe you for an hour and a half to see how fast your stomach empties. If it’s too slow, well, we have medication for that.
Gee, a new possibility. Who knew your stomach could empty too slow? Shouldn’t the nuns have brought this up in grade school? I made the appointment for two days later at Monroe Regional in Ocala, the people who run the gym. I belong to a deal called Prestige 55 at Monroe. That means, for a slight, once-in-a-lifetime fee, I get cheaper gym membership and a special notice on my room door if I should ever wind up admitted to the hospital. Also, people I have never met in my life will come to my room on a daily basis to try cheering me up. So I feel a certain kinship for Monroe. I feel like they are less likely to accidentally kill me there, me being a valued member of Prestige 55 and all. The appointment people told me to be there at 6:45 a.m., meaning I would be getting up at 5:30, my favorite hour. Then again, that’s when we eat our eggs, right? Early.
We’re Off To The Coxville Zoo
Get up at 5:30 much? Let me tell you about 5:30. It’s extremely dark at 5:30. When you go outside at 5:30, there are wispy little spider-webs everywhere, just waiting to drape themselves all over your head and neck. They are invisible so you will not see them. And they are sticky and not easily gotten rid of. When you are foolish enough to actually drive at 5:30, you will encounter fog and you will see illusions all around you which are strangely remindful of the Pinta, the Nina and the Santa Maria. Stay away from them. Try singing to stay awake. Pretend you are Rod Stewart and sing Some Guys Have All The Luck. If you have a Creedence Clearwater Revival CD, put it on. Play anything. There is no possible way to go to sleep with a Creedence tape on. This has been tested in scientific laboratories and never disproven. Anyway, it works for me. Eventually, it will get a little lighter. Eventually, you’ll get where you’re going.
Whenever you go to a gigantic new place—like a hospital, for instance—they give you directions which are wrong. Oh, it’s so easy, they say, those who have travelled there 56 times and think they’re so smart. Then you go and you discover that somebody’s “easy” is, for you, like circumnavigating one of those giant traffic circles in Guadalajuara. But this time, they were right. It was easy. I found the ramp that I was supposed to pull up on and—guess what—there was a middle-aged woman in a security uniform standing there with a clip board, and—with nobody else around—looking like she was waiting just for me. “NAME?” she wanted to know. “Killeen,” I told her, knowing she wouldn’t have it. I mean, they never have it, do they? Then there’s all kinds of difficult accommodations which must be made before they let you in. “Got it right here,” she said, waving me off to one of the select few parking spaces reserved for important early arrivals such as myself. Maybe it’s another unknown perk of Prestige 55. This was working out swimmingly. Maybe today would not be just another dumb, unproductive day in medicine-land. Maybe it would even be, as Walter Cronkite used to say, a day that alters and illuminates our time. Probably not.
Green Eggs And Ham?
No, not quite. More like one lightly scrambled nuclear egg and bread. The young lady who offered them to me was intent on being thorough. “You’re not allergic to eggs, are you?” she asked. “Well, that would sort of defeat the purpose, right?” I replied. “Do I get anything to drink?” My expansive list of choices were water, milk or orange juice. “You don’t have to eat the bread,” she said, generously. “Are you kidding?” I asked her. "If this is all I get for breakfast, I’m eating everything.”
My server’s name was “Kelsey.” Now, stop right there. The world seems to be awash in these Kelseys and I’m wondering where the hell they all came from. I mean, one day they weren’t here at all, next thing you know they’re everywhere. Before the Kelseys, it was the Tiffanys and the Brittanys. Where did Brittany come from, for crying out loud? Are we paying off some little known debt to England? How do these names happen all at once? Do all the Future Mothers of America get together at some baby-naming fling and set the rules? Does it have anything to do with Oprah? I don’t get it.
Okay, so once you eat your egg, all the fun is over. Now you’ve got to go and lie under what they call a Nuclear Camera for a goddam hour-and-a-half while the infernal device records the happenings in your guts. I can think of reality TV shows that are better fun than this. Okay, maybe not many. Of course, you can sleep. You can if you’re one of those people like Siobhan who could sleep during the riots at Attica. Me, not so good. I mean, there are people coming in and out of the room, discussing their vibrant weekends and munching on delectable pastries, something you can do if you’re young and not restricted to the produce of hens. I lay there for an eternity, not wanting to ask how much time had passed, secure in the knowledge somebody would pipe up, “two minutes”. After several days passed, I finally summoned up the courage to ask the hour. “Only thirty minutes left,” Kelsey chirped, brightly. My heart soared. “How’s it looking over there?” I asked her. “Pretty good,” she said. “Your stomach was emptying as soon as we turned the camera on. Just like it’s supposed to.” Great, I thought. Another blind alley. The doctor didn’t get back with me yet. I don’t think there will be much of use to report. The Odyssey will continue until a horrible life-threatening event occurs, laying bare the long simmering disease. Or until another exciting procedure is concocted and set out for the picnic. I’ll keep plodding along, chasing clues on the Web, self-diagnosing, searching for arcane solutions. Maybe I’ll try one of those Holistic guys. I hear from my friends that they feed you better during testing. And almost none of them are named Kelsey.
Lila, The $6,000 Dog
Well, I don’t want to mislead you. The actual puppy purchase price was only one-tenth of that. But now we need extras. First, we rebuilt the back porch, the better to confine Lila to the immediate Pathogenes area when delivery men were about. Back porch cost: $1600. Then, of course, Siobhan decided we’d better build a new fence down the driveway (one board along the top, wire top to bottom) so that Lila wouldn’t run off while we were on vacation. Cost: $4200. Add in a thoroughly ineffectual dog school experience and you’re over six thou. We’re not counting feed or toys, of course. You can buy a lot of good stuff for $6000. They have pretty, conversational parrots for $6000 and the parrots don’t wake you up barking at 5 a.m. like Lila does. You can train your horse for three months for $6000. You can go to all the amusement parks in the whole world for $6000 and have something left over. I’m not sure we’ve made a sound investment here. Maybe I’ll be proved wrong. Maybe some day a devious crew of microscope thieves posing as landscape gardeners will be foiled at the lab door by a snarling, barking Lila. Maybe some day. Gregarious as she is right now, however, if they turn up tomorrow she’ll show them to the keys.
Who’ll Stop The Rain?
Good question. Cosmic Flash was due to work Tuesday morning and, if all went well, repair back to Miami to resume his racing career. But who can work these day on the High Seas of Eisaman Equine’s training center. The newspaper today said we are getting record amounts of rain for July and nobody doubts it. Every day, the monsoons come and the work is put off for another 24 or 48 hours. We’re trying again Saturday. We know those Prestige 55 folks are close to God and we’re hoping they’ll put in a good word.
That’s all, folks
