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Blogs by Robert A. Mills
ANNUAL PHYSICAL
10/1/2011 6:57:02 AM
When the bedside phone rang at 7:40 AM, I was tempted to snarl, “You better have a damn good reason to call before 10 o’clock!” But I didn’t. I knew who it was.
“This is Dr. Riti,” the caller said. I had seen him the day before for my annual physical exam, and the last thing he’d said was, “I’ll call you tomorrow with the blood test results.”
“So,” I wanted to know at sunrise, “how’d I do?”
“Clean as a whistle,” he said, cheerily. “Everything is okay, well within the normal range. Cholesterol, sugar, psa, kidneys, liver — everything looks copasetic.”
“So I’m good to go for another month or two,” I flatly concluded, hoping to elicit a Happy Birthday! as I had celebrated my 80th year in mid-July; he’d not so much as sent me a Dollar Store greeting card.
“A few days, at least,” the sawbones stated in the same sad tone in which he always said, “And how are we today?”
Dr. Dyasagar Riti, an Indian from the village of Kullursandhai and probably the first of his multitudinous family (he has 19 siblings) to ever attend college, has been my primary physician for more than fifteen years. He had taken over the practice from my original medicine man, Dr. Eddy Wright, when that good fellow suddenly, for reasons known only to him, became a pharmaceutical salesman. I have no idea from whence Dr. Riti obtained his degree, but I once saw his report card, noting he had done well in hearts, lungs and pancreases (two A’s and a B are not to be taken lightly, even for a Sikh.)
Also, his expertise with ingrown toenails and imbedded earwax was exemplary. Digital examinations of prostate organ was tolerated due to his remarkably small index finger — he claims to have become a doctor rather than a musician because he could not span more than three frets on a sitar.
My main concern in recent years, however, has been my increasingly useless right hand.
“What’s wrong with it?” Dr. Riti asked.
“I can no longer hold a pen to write my name,” I said. “I cannot button my shirt or tie a tie. Zipping up my fly is impossible.”
“Do you have any pain?”
I shook my head.
“I think it’s arthritis,” the doctor said, “the painless kind. Use your left hand.”
He palmed me off on a rheumatoid specialist who didn’t think it was arthritis, though she did notice I had an abdominal hernia. “What do I do about THAT?” I panicked.
“Nothing,” she told me. “But you should go to physical therapist for your hand.”
Unfortunately, physical therapy cost $35 each for the first ten sessions she suggested, and it was out of the question. Instead, I went to see Dr. Thomas Peter, a neurologist, and he sent me for x-rays and an MRI. He also had a Dr. Kennedy do a lengthy “nerve” analysis that involved multiple needles and electricity. Dr. Kennedy cautiously scheduled a second MRI, a brain scan, to see if “you got any tumors or nasty stuff like that in your head. Maybe you had a stroke or something — maybe Parkinson’s.”
I was beside myself, especially during the 40 minutes required in the MRI torture chamber, but happily, everything turned out negative.
“Whadda I do now?” I whined.
“I dunno. Find someone smarter than me, I guess.”
He said the No. 1 neurologist in Georgia was a Dr. Lawrence Cranston, but it turned out he was not in my insurance plan. His fee for a consultation, examination and diagnosis would be about three hundred dollars.
“Any other suggestions?” I inquired. Dr. Kennedy replied, “No. Next step would be either a chiropractor or the Mayo Clinic.”
“I called the insurance company,” I told him, “to see if the Mayo Clinic was in my plan. Talked to two different reps — neither had ever heard of Mayo. You have any idea what the cost would be?”
“The chiropractor or the Mayo?
“The Mayo.”
“I dunno. Maybe fifty Gs, with transportation and all.”
It’s frustrating not to be able to open an envelope to retrieve a letter, but typing my columns and novels with one hand, my left, using solely my signal finger, is tough, but not insurmountable.
Anyway, I decided to bite the bullet and take out a loan from Wells Fargo and go see Dr. Cranston next week, even though his fee will be equal to a mortgage payment.
Light a candle for me.
Copyright©2011 by Robert A. Mills, all rights reserved
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