I am the very model of a modern patient medical,
With doctors urological, vascular and general.
But only for the past ten years or so. Before that, there was thirty-five years of relative abstinence, disturbed only by a sporadic physical. God bless The Great Middle Years because these physicians have an unerring way of showing up at the beginning and the end of things. When we were kids, they were there from birth through the early grades of elementary school, wiping runny noses, dispatching pills as big as footballs and jabbing us with needles straight out of a Frankenstein movie. Chicken Pox. Doctor. Measles. Doctor. Whooping Cough. Doctor. My sister, Alice (the Republican), had terrible bouts of asthma and had to carry her own personal physician around with her on the back of her tricycle. My own doctor told my parents I had Rheumatic Fever in the second grade, causing me to miss all but the first and last months of school and all the fun from the greatest snowfall in the history of Lawrence, Massachusetts. I still don’t believe him but it did get me started reading comic books, so there’s that.
Everybody trusts their doctors implicitly, but not me. I keep an eye on ‘em. That’s because when I was about five, Dr. Leonard Bennett Ainsworth told my parents I needed to have my tonsils taken out. Do they even do this any more? Well, they did in those days, there was tonsil money to be made. You couldn’t walk around a third-grade schoolyard without bumping into someone who’d had his tonsils ousted. It was like The Black Plague of Early Youth. Doctors kept adding new wings to their houses. Tonsil money.
All well and good. But at least they could have been honest about it. One day, I noticed a strange car parked in the street in front of our house. It had a green cross attached to the license plate, warning alert children that a dreaded doctor was nearby. I asked my mother about it but she feigned ignorance. I smelled a rat. Eventually, of course, the doctor is going to actually have to come in and the plot is foiled. This is how I discovered that I would be having my very own tonsils removed and it’s pretty scary business for a little kid. You have no time to prepare, no opportunity to hide in the cellar or run away from home.
Anyway, after admitting the sordid truth, they finally pick you up, plunk you on the kitchen table and gas you with ether, a popular knock-out drug of the day, applied by viciously clapping an ether-filled rag over your nose and mouth until you are out cold. In the meantime, of course, I fought like a Tasmanian Devil and used words thought to be the province of only seventh or eighth-graders.
After this barbaric experience is over and you awaken, the wretched transgressors try to ply you with ice-cream and such, hoping you will forgive the atrocities visited upon you, as if that were even a remote possibility. I did eat the ice-cream, of course, albeit with feigned reluctance, since I am no fool. But the experience did not leave me a trusting patient, a big fan of the medical profession. Or parents, either.
When I was a Junior in high-school, I got a touch of asthma, myself. I tried to blame it on Alice, but my mother said asthma didn’t work that way. Instead of taking me to the doctor, for some reason my mother began hauling me to a venerated chiropractor in Salem, New Hampshire, just down the road from Rockingham Park Race Track. To say this guy was fairly popular was like saying a few girls thought Elvis was okay. There were buses in the parking lot. BUSES! One of the reasons, I discovered, was that instead of paying a set fee, the patient was allowed to place any amount he wanted in the payment box, a nifty trick which worked pretty good on the conscientious people that walked the Earth in those days. Try it now, you’ll be lucky if someone doesn’t steal all the money and piss in the box. Anyway, this guy operated out of a barn-sized edifice full of moaning oldsters with bulging discs. Most of them emerged from treatment with smiles on their faces, almost as if Oral Roberts had delivered God’s Medicine. He fixed me, too—for a couple of days. I told my mother to ramp down her contribution because I was only cured 20% of the time. Anyway, this asthma came and went, never too tough a customer until I was in my late twenties and spent a few days at the Miami Merchandise Mart, a building still in progress with clouds of plaster dust floating throughout. Back in Gainesville a few days later, I wound up in the Alachua General Hospital Emergency Room, where they pumped me full of adrenaline and got me breathing again. Dr. Melvin Dace admitted me and I laid around not much improved for a couple of days. Dace came in one day, looked at me and told a nurse to move me to Intensive Care if there was no improvement by that night. A big double-gulp to that. When I hear “Intensive Care Unit” I have a funny habit of thinking “Next To Death.” For the rest of the day, I concentrated on simple, regular breathing. Breathe in. Breathe out. Think of nothing else. It worked, too. After I few hours of this, I was breathing much better. Doctor M.D. came in and was pleasantly surprised. “He’s much better,” smiled The Man. An appraisal which proved to be true two days later when girlfriend Patty Walker assured me it was possible to have sex undetected in a hospital room and proved it. After that, thanks to modern asthma medicines, decades of bliss, disturbed on just a few occasions by punishments for those trips to Mexico. I never thought about doctors much in those days. After all, the personal weather was warm and sunny. But those thirty-five years were just the lull before the storm.
A Day In The Life
Those legions of us who have been tarred by the Demon are required to make a pilgrimage every three or four years to the Shrine of the Chemical Stress Test. You will fast for several hours before going and you will not mess with coffee or other caffeine products for twenty-four hours in advance. My personal adventure was this Tuesday and I decided to read up on the test even though I had experienced one about three years ago. Sometimes, this is a bad idea. In the process of investigating, for instance, I discovered that the drug Adenosine, which I would be getting, sometimes “flows to healthy areas and may leave obstructed arteries with low blood flow, potentially triggering a HORRIBLE HEART ATTACK!” Okay, the capital letters are my invention, also the adjective and the exclamation point. But even with lower-case letters, you’re just as dead. I asked Justin, the tester-to-be, about this and he just laughed it off, as 27-year-old people are wont to do. “Hardly EVER happens,” tsked Justin. What a relief.
CSTs are performed for a variety of reasons. Some people cannot physically tolerate a treadmill stress test, others with pacemakers can’t get a proper evaluation and those of us with stents need to have an occasional look-see to find out whether the little critter is narrowing, etc. It’s a good idea to shave the front upper part of the body for these things prior to showing up for the test since an EKG is recorded at the start and constantly monitored on a screen during the test. An intravenous line is also inserted in the arm and a blood pressure cuff placed around a wrist to observe blood-pressure throughout the approximate half-hour of the test. The testee now lies on his back on a setup not dissimilar to an MRI or CT Scan machine. When the test begins, the subject’s body is moved into the machine up to his chin, hands placed over the head. People are advised a day or two prior to testing that anyone with notions of claustrophobia (or people who don’t want to be bored for half-an-hour) can be sedated. This, of course, prohibits the poor guy from screaming and hollering if the adenosine is causing a big problem (for which the testers have an antidote). No thanks, fellas, I’ll just stay awake and keep an eye on things, if you don’t mind.
After several minutes of machine foreplay, the stress-producing medication is introduced through the IV and the patient’s heart rate accelerates. When 85% of the target heart rate is achieved, an isotope (radioactive material that helps make images of the heart) is introduced intravenously. A drop in the diastolic blood-pressure is generally awaited before the administration of the isotope. Images that were taken before heart acceleration are called “resting images; those taken after are called “stress images.” The two can be compared to find problem areas. The medication given during the test dilates the heart arteries, giving evidence of any potential or existing blockages when the heart is stressed. If the subject has a stent, blood flow through the stent is examined (if insufficient, another stent can be placed inside the original). And if an earlier stress test has been performed, comparisons to the latter test will be made and doctors can proceed accordingly.
For the boring first part of the test, I was looking for the cartoon channel. Then for about ten minutes, I thought about the surprising buildup of toxic pollutants on the Kamchatka Peninsula. When it finally came time for the heavy breathing, Justin entered and said the hour had arrived. I should report any untoward incidents, however minor. I could feel the slimy juices doing their dirty work. All of a sudden, deeper breathing was required. Much deeper breathing. You have a tendency to wonder if you can keep breathing fast enough, which is one thing when you’re on a treadmill and can stop any time and another when you are lying a helpless captive in a giant cylinder and there will be no stopping. You concentrate on breathing in and out for about five minutes. Gradually, the breathing slows. After a few more minutes, breathing returns to normal and the test is over. Drinks all around. You are Not Dead Yet. The workers remove the EKG tentacles, the blood-pressure cup and the IV. Justin, who is not allowed to discuss his interpretation of the results, smiles. I ask the question anyway.
“Well,” says Justin, “all that is for Doctor Van Roy to interpret. But at least you passed the first test.”
“Oh yeah, what’s that?” I asked, curiously.
“You got up off the table.”
The Thomas Center, Gainesville
One Last Word
Before we close the books on The Year That Was….2014. As discussed earlier, 2014 was a very good year for Marty Jourard, The Rise Of Marijuana, Flying Pie readership, professional soccer and goats, the latter of which spread across the Greater Fairfield area like a raging forest fire, but without the ashes. Siobhan’s own personal herd rose from five to nine with the births of a quartet of newcomers who continue to thrive in this goat-friendly atmosphere. Soon, they’ll be off to school and picking up part-time jobs at the car-wash. As previously advertised, Siobhan bought additional property to expand their horizons, then added an exciting new seesaw for the recreation area and a heavy-duty plasma TV for the goathouse. We originally tuned it to the Animal Channel but the kids kept asking for The Flash so it’s up to the general population to sort it out. Enough with the goats.
Vacation Time took us to the California Coast, where we survived a two-hour rental car wait at SFO, walked across the Golden Gate Bridge (twice), ferried to Sausalito and back, laughed at the uproarious Beach Blanket Babylon, stomped around Golden Gate Park, revisited the energetic Haight and bought our friend, Greg Poe, a PECKER cap in the Castro. Well, it had a picture of a rooster on it, so what’s the problem?
From San Francisco, we drove down the coast past Castroville, the artichoke capital of the world, and holed up in Monterrey for a couple of days, visiting the unforgettable Nepenthe restaurant in Big Sur and checking out the sea otter colony at Point Lobos State Reserve, with an afternoon visit to ritzy Carmel-By-The-Sea, where Clint Eastwood was not in evidence.
After that, onward to L.A., where my sister Alice dwells, tossing darts at Nancy Pelosi photos in her rec room. We took Alice to Venice Beach, the Santa Monica Pier and Hollywood Boulevard, all in one day. She said we walked too much. Republicans don’t walk.
Finally, it was down to beautiful Laguna Beach, current home of boyhood friend Jack Gordon and his wife, Barbara, a very pleasant woman with an annoying habit. She never reads The Flying Pie, not once, even when we talk about Jack. Gee. What is it with some people? We’re hoping to see Jack again—he can even bring Barbara—this July in our old neighborhood in Lawrence. We’ll undoubtedly write a column about the experience and we might even include a bunch of stuff about Barbara. Bet she reads that one.
Last Summer, old pal Chuck Lemasters told us it was imperative we gather up all the Old Gainesvillians for one Last Roundup before everybody was dead. Good idea. We’re trying to coordinate this spectacular festival—I’m thinking the old Thomas Hotel grounds in Summer—with the publication of Marty Jourard’s tome, Gettin’ Down In Gatortown , but the editors at the University of Florida Press are poring over the copy very carefully to make sure Marty didn’t put too much sex and drugs in with the rock ‘n’roll. And here I thought they’d want it to be anatomically correct. So far, seven hundred people have told me they’re coming for sure but there’s always that guy with the hoodie and the scythe to consider.
Siobhan Ellison, whoever she is, had a big year in 2014. So big her old accountant, Myron, told her she was getting a little too large for him to handle, so now we’ve got a younger guy named Russell who has an actual office that is not in his house. I guess that’s progress. Pathogenes, Inc. is moving forward, if at a glacial pace, in its dealings with the moribund FDA, whose officers get paid whether they work or not and we suspect it’s mostly the latter. She’s working with over 1200 veterinarians across the country, however, and her success rate in dealing with EPM horses is still over 87%. And she even got a new truck. Siobhan still goes to yoga on Thursday nights so she doesn’t have to sit home watching me reread The Flying Pie sixty or so times looking for possible mistakes. She says to say “hi.”
So we’re done with 2014, but we keep it close to our hearts. The New Year brings Infinite Possibilities. A few things are known. Bull Ensign will continue his brief career, starting Sunday at Gulfstream Park. Cosmic Saint (aka Serena), half-sister to Flash of the same cosmos, will hit the racetrack by April. Kathleen Ellison will graduate from medical school in May in the home town of Court Lewis. Vacation Time in late July will find us visiting Acadia National Park, near Bar Harbor, Maine, with stops in The Big Apple, Beantown and Lawrence on the way. And Marty Jourard’s book will finally be published, leading to the arrival of the Grand Gainesville Reunion sometime this summer. It will, won’t it, Marty? The Whole World Is Waiting.
Photo Of The Week
You Can Keep Your Miss Americas. We’ll Take A Subterranean Circus Girl Every Time.
Linda Hughes And Debbie Adelman Yuk It Up, Circa 1972.
That’s all, folks….
All Goats, All the time: http://pathogenes.com/GoatCam/View.html
