Troika
I’m not much of a collector (except for books, but they just seem to be attracted to me, not really collected) but, as I’ve gotten older, I seem to be collecting medical specialists. Where just a few years ago I had just a Primary Care Doc (who changed with such a regularity that it meant that sometimes I didn’t actually get to see them) but now in recent years I find that I have now collected a Urologist, a Radiation Oncologist (on permanent retirement, we hope), a new Primary Care doctor, a relatively new Dentist, an Orthopedic Surgeon, a Cardiologist, an Endocrinologist, a Neurologist, and several Physical Therapists.
Last week was a veritable bumper crop of medicine, even for me.
Wednesday - Neurologist Dr. Kaplan: For the past couple of months, I’ve had a slight tic in my lower lip when I meditate. This a new wrinkle and only happens very infrequently. I mentioned it to my meditation teacher and she said to mention it to my primary care physician. I did this and she gave me a cursory exam and then sent me to a full-blown neurologist when she couldn’t find anything wrong. He then gave me the once over last week (pull my hand, push your leg against my hand, can you hear this?…). I then explained that I pretty much just considered this fallout from the unconscious from the meditation and I wasn’t worried about it. He got a funny look on his face and I got the feeling that Dr. Kaplan doesn’t work with too many experienced meditators and my clinical evaluation freaked him out a little. I keep forgetting that neurologists are not psychologists. Anyway, he determined that I don’t have any other symptoms of Parkinson’s so I’m pretty much “normal” and I shouldn’t worry about this thing unless it gets bad. Which is good, though I don’t know exactly how I feel about being “normal.”
Thursday - Dentist Millen: My teeth have been threatening to fall out of my mouth for decades now. English/Scottish teeth mean bad genes in the gene lottery. The strategy for the past 40 years through three dentists (I keep being passed down) has been “defense” — better known as keeping the teeth in my head for as long as possible. The latest chapter in this strategy was refilling a tooth that already had been filled years ago (patching the patch) before things get so bad with it that we’re talking replacement of this part of my mouth. My dentist’s last words: “Things are fragile, don’t bite down hard.” Given the on-going state of my teeth, I haven’t done this in years, but it does make one wonder what I should be using these teeth for if I can’t bite down.
Friday - Cardiologist Shrivastava: I have high blood pressure as the result of a situation where the left ventricle of my heart works harder than it should. The result is a physical beefing up of this portion of my heart muscle and it is less flexible than it should be (my heart is partially muscle bound - the only part of my body that it like this, as far as I can determine). Where the last time that I saw Dr. S, he was painting doom scenarios of a pacemaker in my future, this time he was all optimistic about my ability to lose the 20 pounds of fat that need to go for me to have a more healthy heart. This seems to be the result that of the fact that he has now realized that I used to weigh 15 pounds more than I do now when he first saw me. This makes me wonder how much of the diagnosis biz here in the medical gray zone that I inhabit has to do with how the doctor feels from day to day.
Despite all this “care” that I receive, I feel relatively good. You would think that I would be ready to be cast in the Walking Dead given all the medical resources that I consume. But this just seems to be the new “normal” as I head into my 70’s (should I make it). If anything is going to kill me, it’s probably the co-pays.
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