Ah -- go heal thyself, f''crissake

Ever since I had my touch of infirmity back in June I have been spending entirely too much time dealing with the medical fraternity. Oh, don’t worry. Everything is OK and I am getting thoroughly on track after a couple of glitches in my health. It’s just that I want to get back to where it was -- which consisted of me never going to visit a doctor.

Oh, I have nothing against doctors as such. It’s an honorable enough calling, and I even have a couple of them in my family. I just don’t want to give them my trade.

You see, men don’t do well with doctors. Men don’t understand such psychological manifestations as hypochondria or Munchausen’s syndrome. Why would somebody want to see a doctor unless he absolutely had to?

Why do normal males run metaphorically screaming from regular checkups? Because doctors are authority figures. Males don’t handle those so well. Doctors are like cops, parents, teachers, and wives: they are empowered to tell you what you mustn’t do any longer.

Furthermore, doctors force otherwise morally upstanding chaps to tell lies due to the probing personal questions they are asked.

“How much do you drink?”
“Oh, gee, it’s been a while. Does sacramental wine count?”

“Still smoking?”
“Oh heck no. Quit a while ago.”
“How long ago?”
“Uh – well, curiously enough, just before this appointment. Otherwise, oh, about two cigarettes a year.”

“Any problem with erectile dysfunction?”
“Me?? You must be joking. At it probably about 15-20 times a week. But, er, I wouldn’t mind a prescription for that there Viagra, just so maybe I could up it to 25 times a week. ”

I guess the hard part is the caveats. We all do things we shouldn’t and we do those things for a long time. We like to think about men we’ve heard of who lived to 110 and had the most atrocious life-styles. Winston Churchill is assuredly a hero to most men, in that regard. “Yep – old Churchill; two fifths of brandy a day and 25 stogies. Didn’t hurt him.”

But, let’s say prudence and common sense dictate that a fellow might touch base with that virtual stranger, AKA his GP. That’s what happened to me. It had been so long that I hadn’t realized my old doctor had retired and been replaced by a callow youth not long past acne. Oh, OK, probably late 30s. And, he has turned out to be a very nice guy, and impressively conscientious. But, otherwise, I still hate going.

You know the routine. You go to your clinic. Doctors are all in fancy-schmantzy clinics these days. It’s their own investment and it pays well. That’s why my former doctor is now retired, even though he’s younger than I am. The bastard.

So, you go to the clinic, check in and are told to sit down in the waiting room and wait until you are called. You look at the other people in the room and hope that none of them have anything communicable, what with all their hacking and wheezing. What are you doing here if you’re sick? Why aren’t you at home in bed rather than spreading your crud to other folks?

Some of these people look worse than others. Some, you’re pretty damn sure, aren’t going to see another Christmas. Oh, and that guy, major booze-hound, you can tell by his ruby complexion. Is his doctor ever going to give him shit, and is he ever going to lie. Then there is the woebegone looking 17-year-old preggo and her junkie-looking significant other. Wow, is that kid ever going tot have a nice life.

After shuffling though the magazines, most of them being of the vintage Ladies’ Home Journal ilk, and building up huge resentments against people who came in after one, but have already been ushered off to a doctor, you get the call. At that point you go from the big room to the little room. In the little room you will sit for at least another half hour while the doctor goes for a manicure, or slips out for a cocktail, or whatever it is they do while you are cooling your heels.

I tend to scope out the room while I’m there. I sheaf through the assorted medical journals at the desk, and ponder the diplomas on the wall. Hmm, University of Lesser Cayman Medical School. There is paraphernalia in this room. A gurney thing to lie on. So, how exactly do those stirrup things work? Do they wash the gurney down at the end of the day? A box of rubber gloves. Oh, God, I’d forgotten about ‘la teste’. Arggh. And by then I am bored senseless. Eventually I hear chatting in the corridor and female laughter combined with male jollity. So, what’s he doing? Making a date?

And then he comes in and the real stuff starts and it will continue to go on for minutes and minutes, with him writing on his pad all the overpriced prescriptions he wants you to buy, none of which you want to take, and none of which you ant to pay for.

Once, when I was addictions counselling at a rehab I told a doctor that she knew absolutely nothing about addictions. The issue concerned a prescription that she was insisting a client must be permitted to utilize in the facility. I told her to pound salt; wasn’t gonna happen at our rehab.

She got highly indignant at the idea of a mere layperson taking her to task.

I found it a very empowering moment, especially when she hung up on me.

I often remember that when I go to see a doctor.