Tough Love

Last year my general practitioner and dentist both quit practicing medicine within two weeks of each other. Actually, I’m sort of lying. My doctor went on sabbatical and my dentist moved to another state. Still, it was difficult not to feel personally insulted to some degree at the sudden exodus of all of my health care professionals over such a compact period of time.

My doctor is affiliated with Northwestern Hospital’s physician group so to remedy the situation they simply transferred my records to a new one. I liked my old doctor. She was a big hippy, and I often found myself telling her lies during my annual physicals. Though, I don’t know if this was because she was a hippy, or because I was simply trying to impress her. What shocked me is that even my lies weren’t sufficient to keep myself from being lectured during the check-ups. Here’s a sample conversation:

“How many alcoholic beverages would you say that you consume a week?” she would ask.

I’d sit there for a moment racking my brain to remember what I’d read about healthy alcohol consumption in some long ago health magazine.

“Oh … not that many. Maybe five on a Saturday or something.”

My doctor would shift her weight from one Birkenstock to the other and stare at me as if I were wearing a fur coat made of kittens.

“Well, I have good news. You can still have five drinks during the week. In fact, you can have seven if you’d like, but cut it back to one per day. Also, you should stick with red wine.”

After stating something like this, she would stand there silently for several seconds with a stern expression on her face. This gave me the impression that if I forced her to repeat the same thing at next year’s physical there’d be hell to pay. Hippy or not, I doubt she would have had any qualms about kicking my ass.

The other things she’d critique me for were wearing high heels*, for not incorporating enough calcium into my diet and for not eating enough servings of fruits/vegetables a day.

*She would force me to stand on a piece of paper so that she could trace my foot. Then she’d set my shoe on top of the tracing to show how it squeezed my foot into an unnatural shape.

When a friend from college moved to Chicago and asked me to recommend a doctor, I suggested mine. A few weeks later she called to tell me that my doctor was a total asshole.

“Really?” I asked genuinely surprised, “I like her.”

“All she did was yell at me the entire time about being overweight and not eating enough fruits and vegetables.”

“Yeah … you should always lie about your fruit intake. Otherwise, she gets mad. Just tell her you eat eleven servings per day.”

“Why should I have to lie? I’m the patient. I’m the one who’s paying.”

My friend was all worked up.

“She’s just telling the truth. That’s her job.”

“She doesn’t have to be such a jerk about it.”

That was when I blurted out something that kind of surprised me.

“I like her. She reminds me of my Mom.”

At that moment, I realized that I like my healthcare professionals to have personality traits similar to my mother. I wonder if this is true for a lot of people?

I remember being eight years old and watching my mom install a curtain rod in the kitchen at my grandparent’s house. When she tried to set the drill on the kitchen counter it fell off, got tangled in the cord and the drill bit pierced her foot.

I don’t think she even flinched.

“Go call your dad,” she said calmly while extracting the drill from her foot and setting it carefully down.

As I was running to the phone, I heard my grandma say irritably.

“Oh, for Christ's sake! You’re getting blood on the floor! Go outside!”

When I returned from the phone my mother and younger sister were both standing in the carport waiting for my dad to arrive to drive them to the hospital. Despite the fact that her foot had just been stigmatized, she seemed completely unruffled.

My point is that my mother is a total bad ass and expects everyone else to act accordingly. Unfortunately for me, bad ass-isity is not a trait that comes naturally.

I’m very impressionable, however, so when I was sick/hurt if my mother told me to quit crying and that I’d be fine, I believed her. This, I realized, was why I liked Dr. Sykes. Despite her annoying hippy mentality, she was more likely to tell you to suck it up than give you a hug. Apparently, I find this soothing.

My new doctor is the total opposite. She hasn’t yelled at me once. In fact, when I had my annual checkup she simply told me that I was in fine health and to keep up the good work. In February, I had to go back because I had a weird rash on my forehead and a piercing headache. As soon as she saw me her smile of greeting melted into an expression of concern.

“Oh sweetie,” she said standing a little too close and stroking my back, “You’ve got shingles.”

I burst into tears. She continued to pet me like a cat until I calmed down a little.

“What’s shingles?” I finally asked.

“Well …” she paused for a lengthy moment to collect her thoughts.

That was when I began to imagine my funeral. Would I want my loved ones to throw a party to celebrate my life, or would I prefer something sedate with lots of crying? She started speaking again before I could decide.

“Shingles is when the chicken pox virus re-expresses itself. When you have chicken pox as a kid, the virus remains in your body.”

“That’s disgusting,” I said in a tone that implied it was her fault.

“With adults, it’ll sometimes reactivate in the form of shingles and attack your nerves. That’s why you have that piercing pain in your forehead.”

After that she wrote out a few prescriptions, told me I wasn’t allowed to go to work for the next two weeks and sent me on my way. As I left the doctor’s office I was still upset and called my mother to tell her the awful news.

“What’s wrong?” she asked.

“I have shingles,” I whimpered.

“Are you crying?”

“Yes.”

“It’s not lethal.”

“I know … but for some reason my doctor gave me a massive prescription for vicodin, and it’s freaking me out.”

“You’ll be fine. Did you hear about your second grade gym teacher? I just found out she has breast cancer. You should send her a card.”

When I got off the phone, I wasn’t crying anymore. Instead I began thinking about how my new doctor had pet me while she delivered her news. That was kind of weird. I hope she doesn’t forget to wash her hands between patients.

It turned out that the shingles weren’t lethal. In fact, the vicodin made them downright fun at times.

I was incredibly embarrassed, though, when I discovered that my friend Kay had become confused and told several people that I had scabies. When I called her to tell her to stop, she was apologetic.

“What?” she said, “I’m sorry. They both sound the same.”

“No they don’t. Scabies is a dirty, disgusting disease. Mine is just chicken pox for adults.”

“What is scabies?”

“I don’t know, but I don’t have it so stop telling people that I do.”

Later, I discovered my friend Mick was mistakenly informing our mutual friends that I’d contracted rickets. I don’t know what rickets is either, but it sounded better than scabies, so I let that one go.

-prEviously was disEased, but am now oKay