September 10 – “What’s up, Doc?”

I did something yesterday that I haven’t done in literally years.  I went to the doctor’s office.  Now wait a minute.  I have been to a doctor’s office hundreds of times. After all, I still have to show up at least once or twice a year at the rheumatologist and once a year or so at the neurologist.  And I have even been in the emergency clinic several times, most recently for my catfish puncture wound and my fall and subsequent blow to the head.  But this one was quite different.  I can say I haven’t done one like this since well before Hurricane Ike, which came through back in 2008.  I can’t even remember the reason I would have done it back then.  OK, that’s enough preliminaries.  What did I go for that was so radically unusual?  A check up. 

Yep.  Not so exciting, is it?  I haven’t had a regular family doctor since my last one got a better offer and never returned to Galveston.  In fact the last four I have had did the same thing.  I made it a point to warn this new guy that he may be relocating sometime in the near future if he takes me on as a patient, but he insisted he planned to be around for a while.  We’ll see.

Doctor Junior, AKA the medical student in the office, took my history.  That was after I had already told he nurse the same things.  Which came after I had already written it all down on the form they gave me.  Which was simply a restatement of what was pretty much already in the computer.  Well, I guess there were some significant gaps in what they had on file since many of my doctors have been in Houston.  The nurse asked me if I was still on one medication that I didn’t remember ever even hearing of before.  Apparently I took it sometime back in the 90’s.  Nope.  Scratch that one out.  I have a whole new list for you. 

When I finally met the doctor, he didn’t do much of a physical exam.  He asked a lot of questions and zeroed in on the head injury and the really sore shoulder I have.  He did look in my ears and eyes, had me stick my tongue out, and made me lift my arms over my head.  He seemed impressed that I was doing water aerobics a few times a week.  He did lift his eyebrows a bit at my blood pressure.  It was 140/100.  I lifted my own eyebrows, too.  I’m used to it being closer to 120/80.  That’s a twenty point jump on both ends of the spectrum there.  Something’s gotta be out of whack.  As it turned out, he decided not to worry too much about the blood pressure until I have a CT scan of my head.  May as well see if there in anything in there to worry about.  Like brains, right?  Seriously, he wants to see if there might be a slow bleed going on that would be causing some if not all of my symptoms (headaches, lack of concentration, blood pressure, weird reaction to heat).  He also ordered an x-ray of my shoulder as the first step to dealing with that one.  I have pretty much just slotted that pain in there with the rest of the pain I deal with every day.  Maybe there really is something else going on that can be fixed.  All the imaging will be done on Monday of next week.  Great.  Something to look forward to after the weekend.  At least I know I will hit my deductible after that CT scan.  Anything else need to be done, Doc?  Let’s get it done now.

Luke 5:31-32 says, “Jesus answered them, ‘It is not the healthy who need a doctor, but the sick.  I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.’”

Father, thank you for guys like my new doctor.  Give him special wisdom to use the vast array of knowledge he has worked so hard to accumulate.  Amen.