Doctor Visits

 With age come health issues and a regiment of pills.   Must have started when I turned 50 with high blood pressure.     Then came high cholesterol and high triglycerides and more pills.  Now I have pills in the morning to get me through the day and pills in the evening to get me through the night.   In addition to my primary care doctor I think I have been to every medical specialist there is, some more than once.   Can’t name them all here, besides don’t know how to spell all the different specialties, and the spell check doesn’t know either.

The dermatologist is one I see regularly or at least three or four times a year and can even spell it now.   Skin cancer reoccurs with me almost on a daily basis.   There always seems to be a new barnacle sprouting up somewhere on my old body, always something new to look at in the mirror each morning.  Every visit is the same old routine; spray on the liquid nitrogen, biopsies a few suspicious looking things and complete removal of others.   Sometimes I feel like I lost a pound of flesh when I leave the place.   They place pressure bandages on my face, arms, sometime on my ears making me look like I’m leaving a war zone.   There were times they asked me if it would be all right if some young interns can watch the examination for training purposes, which I agreed to.    Being almost naked as the doctor points out this and that to the interns while I’m feeling like a specimen in a lab.    Maybe I can have my body pickled after death and sent to a research lab for all to see and study.   Would not have to worry about burial or cremation expenses. 

Then comes the pathology report with all kinds of words only a doctor can understand.   Why can’t they just tell me that one was a good barnacle and that one was a bad barnacle?   The more they apply the nitrogen and the more cutting the higher the bill.    They all seem to smile when I enter the office as I can imagine they all get a big bonus in pay when I come in.  

With all the years of working outside with no protection from the sun I’m now paying the price.   Hopefully the younger generation can learn from my mistakes and avoid the pain, expense and scares later in life.