I have repeatedly been reminded that I’m “Less Young” over the past two months and I’ve had just about enough!
This is the shit that goes on in my head while I’m working myself up to subject myself to yet more tests.
Threw my back out… WAYYYY out about 3 weeks ago. I spent almost a week in bed because laying flat was the only position that didn’t cause excruciating pain. The kind of pain that makes you yelp with each move. The kind of pain Torquemada would have been proud to inflict.
Had some abnormal results in a routine physical prior to the end of the year. That was fun then because my old insurance would pay for the tests, ordered by a doctor that was no longer in their network, but they wouldn’t pay the doctor himself. Holy shit! what a screwed up system.
I changed insurance carriers and fully expected to do routine checkups and generally not see the doctor for the rest of the year. That apparently is not to be, after several more abnormal test results the doctor wants me to go in for an ultrasound of my abdomen.
Yippeee! Reading the web site for the ultrasound people about the prep for an abdominal ultrasound, Oh lovely! I’ll have to not eat and only have clear liquids. Thrilling!
Wait… Clear liquids? This is an ultrasound, what the fuck does the color of the liquid have to do with the price of tea in China? Humm, I guess the particulates in tea or coffee might cause a shadowy reading if the sensor has high enough resolution but I find it hard to believe that a handheld probe would have that kind of sensitivity.
Reading down the menu of services… Throat ultrasounds, abdominal ultrasounds, chest ultrasounds ( I had one of those a while back), prenatal ultasounds, What the fuck is a penis ultrasound? Oh, just what it says on the tin…
I know the doctor is just trying to find the source of the abnormal results of the blood work, I get that he’s trying to see if there’s damage to a critical internal organ. Based on the results over the past months I’m seriously doubting that the results of the last test are valid but I’m not sure what’s causing the abnormal readings.
I need to do more research on the abnormal results, and see if I can’t narrow it down to something logical that I’m doing. It makes no sense that the results are varying from normal to abnormal month to month if we’re looking at a disease process.
My concern is that I don’t want to be gullible and I don’t want to become a science project. At the same time, I’m not at all ready to kiss Death on the lips. I got stuff to do and places to be. Heck I still haven’t had sex with twins!
Near the end of my father’s life he said to me once that he didn’t want to travel out here because he didn’t want to get too far away from his doctors. I don’t know how much of that was and excuse designed to cover the fact that he was too weak to travel, or if he was trying to spare my feelings because he didn’t want to come out here.
I tend to think it was the former rather than the latter. However, I never want to feel like I can’t be too far from my doctor. Unless we’re sleeping together and I get a nice car & condo on the beach out of it… (Yeah, so I’m a whore what of it? At least I KNOW what my price is and accept it.) I’d just as soon not feel or be tethered because of some health issue.
There’s a quality of life versus quantity of life equation in my head which says, “If you’re feeling pretty good keep going and enjoy yourself. Death will find you when it’s damn good and ready so don’t worry about it and don’t go looking for trouble.”
The quantity part of that equation is something like; “If you can do what a doctor says and feel better, last longer, and keep one step ahead of death then it’s probably worth it.”
The problem is balancing the two sides of that equation. I always did SUCK at differential equations!
I’m not ill, I’m nowhere near having to run that Quality of Life calculation yet.
Recently however, I have been confronted with reminders that at some point I will have to run that equation and that I’ll have to live & die according to my answer.
I’ve been thinking about it because of my annoying issues, and the issues of my Mom who’s been in and out of the hospital a lot since Sept.
Recently, her health has improved and it looks like another month or so in the hospital and she’ll be back to her normal self. She’s probably going to be a medical success, much like an old friend who is still kicking in the Pacific Northwest.
As I’ve said before I’m older now, than my father was when he died. There’s a part of me that wonders, “Did something happen to Dad that shortened my brother & my expiration dates? If so, how much intervention am I personally willing to accept and how the hell do I calculate the ROI?”
My friend up North went FULL MONTY with folks seeing parts of him that no other human being had ever seen, so that he could hang around on this strange little world filled with psychotic apes (borrowing loosely from Douglass Adams).
My Mom has had 5 hips and god only knows how much blood in the form of transfusions. Both of these folks have good years left in them so hands down the procedures they’ve endured were probably worth it.
Then I think about my Dad, so sick in his hospital bed. He’d chosen to figuratively fire a flare to get Death’s attention, a “Hey asshole! I’m ready, come and get me.” Even then Death wasn’t quick to show up. I guess Death doesn’t take kindly to orders or demands.
I find myself wondering if Dad could have gotten up from that bed and had a few more days of puttering around seeing the sunrise & hearing the crickets at dusk without being in agonizing pain, would he have taken those days? Yeah, without a doubt, he would have even knowing he on his way out.
What might he have done with them? A last awesome mind bending no holds barred fuck @ some crazy upscale whorehouse, one last night at a bar with his friends playing pool, a last trip to the beach to watch the sunrise, more time with his sons doing any and all of the above with him, to the disapproving tut-tut of grandma?
I guess as a man, I don’t really want to know. I want to be happy, enjoy myself, and just drop dead one day. I’d like it to be a surprise. I’d like my appearance at the pearly gates to be heralded by me loudly exclaiming, “WHAT THE FUCK?” Followed by the disapproving tut-tuts of all the grandmas waiting to speak to St Peter.
I think that’s why men in general don’t go to the doctor unless and until something is falling off or we’re dizzy from blood loss.
I like seeing my doctor when I see him, he’s a good guy.
I really hate the yearly exam. There’s always something “wrong” at this stage in my life, “you need to loose weight, I want you to start taking this pill, you shouldn’t be eating this or that, when was the last time you had a drink (I swear one of these days I’m going to tell him two minutes ago… in your lobby!), I don’t like the looks of that, when did you see a dermatologist last, blah blah blah!”
I preferred it when he just said, “you’re good to go play and call me if you need me.”
As I’ve put on the years it’s less likely that I’m going to hear that anymore. I could simply not go see the Doc until something is falling off or I’m dizzy from blood loss.
I could simply not continue spending money trying to find out why there’s an abnormal result, but I’d never hear the end of it from the other half, and my Mother, and all the rest of the females in my family and life.
There are times when I wish I needed hearing aids… SO I COULD TURN THEM OFF! That would make it a lot easier to ignore all those voices and trundle happily toward just dropping in the garden one spring day.
Well, the ultrasound is non-invasive. I suppose it’s worth it to find out what’s going on, get the Doc off my back and not have to listen to all the whinging from the family.
I swear though, if anyone starts talking about poking me with large bore needles or comes at me with a scalpel it’s going to get nasty.
…They inject something into your penis, force an erection, ultrasound your member, then may inject you with something else to make you soft again? That’s seriously fucked up! They oughta have a room where you and your other half can pound it out.
At least then it might conceivably be worth it. Hell, all the men in the waiting room would have hard-ons in anticipation of that particular ultrasound procedure.
There’d be guys coming out of the cardiac ward signing up for it. Oh, I guess that might not actually be a good thing… I suppose the hospital would have a problem explaining why all the male corpses had grins the undertaker had to jackhammer off.
Alright I gotta make that phone call.