By Dick Brooks
For Capital Region Independent Media
As I age gracefully and mature into the full bloom of senior adulthood, I find that my circle of friends and acquaintances continues to expand.
This is a good thing, however upon reflection, it seems that more and more of them are involved in some way with the medical field. You know you’re starting to age when the receptionist in your doctor’s office knows your first name and you know hers. In my case, I also know not only her name but how many children she has, what her husband does for a living and where her mother winters in Florida.
If you know the first names of six nurses and where your primary physician went to college, you’re probably a senior citizen. I didn’t know I had a primary physician until I became a senior citizen; I thought they were just my doctor. That was before I started collecting them.
I think it would be a great idea for doctors to have their pictures and vital statistics put on their business cards. This should be done by the American Medical Association in a standardized way, then us folks of the older persuasion could collect and trade them like baseball cards. It would give us something to do in the waiting room other than reading stale magazines about prostates, kidneys and other bits of human plumbing.
I also find myself giving directions now differently than I used to. In my wild youth, I gave directions by bars — “turn left by Murphy’s Pub, drive until you get to Gilligan’s Saloon and turn just past the liquor store.” Nowadays it’s “Drive past the medical center, take the first right at the drug store, go right at the urologist’s and its two blocks past the eye associates building.”
People in my age bracket know what I’m talking about; if you don’t, you will.
It does give you something different to do every day, even though a lot of it is redundant. Yesterday, I went to see a retina specialist. A new doctor, in an office I had never been to, an adventure! I drove to the city, turned by the medical center, went past the urologist’s, made a left near my dentist’s and presto, I was there. I parked in the handicap parking spot as I usually do, got out, saw the blue lines for the handicap parking spot, got back into the car and moved it, as I usually do.
It was a really neat place, as are most medical buildings. Medical buildings and doctors are always clean. I took the elevator, which was clean, up to the clean second floor and entered the clean waiting room and was greeted by a smiling, clean receptionist whose first name I didn’t know.
The wait wasn’t long and there was actually a car magazine that was only a couple of months old. A pretty young lady came through the door and called my name, I rose and followed her into the inner sanctum. She filled out some required forms, I’m seriously thinking of getting my date of birth tattooed on my forehead to save time. She then put drops in my eyes and led me back to the waiting room. I went back to my magazine, which got blurrier and blurrier until I couldn’t read it anymore, so I spent the next 10 minutes trying to figure out if the form sitting across from me was male or female — the hairdo was throwing me, with my blurred vision, I couldn’t figure out if she had a really odd haircut or if he was wearing a furry baseball cap. They went in first so I’ll never know; I could have asked the receptionist except I didn’t know her first name.
My name was called and the pretty young lady, at least I think it was the pretty young lady, led me back down the hall, past the bathroom (seniors always know where the bathroom is) and into a little room. It had one of those eye exam towers in it, you know, the ones that look like submarine periscopes and a bunch of frames on the wall. I assume these were the doctor’s degrees and honors but I couldn’t read them, they could have been the end flaps from Happy Meal boxes for all I knew. The young lady left and I sat there, pupils fixed and dilated as they used to say on one of the few medical TV shows I used to watch.
The door opened and in came The Junior Doctor, a nice young man, very professional, and checked my eyes out. I got to stick my head into the periscope, I put my chin into the chin rest, after figuring out which chin he wanted, and rested my forehead, which I have more of than most folks, against the head band. I then got to watch a light show that brought me back to the ‘60s and my rocking years. He wrote down some notes and told me that the doctor would be with me shortly.
I sat there blinking for a very short time when the doctor appeared. I couldn’t pick him out of a police lineup but he appeared to be closer to my age than The Junior Doctor. He examined my eyes closely, made several notes and happily, for me, told me that I had no problems to worry about and that I wouldn’t need any treatment of any kind. Altogether a most pleasant and knowledgeable man!
I felt my way down the hall to the receptionist’s desk and checked out after learning her first name, just in case.
I walked out into the first sunshine in three weeks, felt my way to my car, found my sunglasses, pulled my baseball cap down as far as I could, adjusted the steering wheel and took a nap for a half hour or so until the drops started to wear off, at which time I drove slowly down the road, turned left at the urologist’s and rode off into the sunset towards home.
Thought for the week—A pessimist is never disappointed.
Until next week, may you and yours be happy and well.
Reach columnist Dick Brooks at Whittle12124@yahoo.com.
