Man: Doc, it hurts when I do this.
Doctor: Then don't do that.
Well, for awhile now I've been having dizzy spells when I stand up. I'll be sitting somewhere, feeling good, and the next moment I'll get up and feel dizzy. I have to steady myself for a few seconds before it goes away.
Like most guys, I figured if I waited long enough it would go away. When it didn't go away, I started to think all kinds of things that might be wrong with me.
I just finished watching Breaking Bad, and I thought about Walter White, the chemistry teacher turned crystal meth cook, who was dying of lung cancer (Did I spoil anything? Oops!). Let's see, he's got a cough, and I've got a cough. He got dizzy and fainted in the car wash he worked at, and I've gotten dizzy while waiting for my car to be detailed at a car wash. He's got lung cancer, so maybe...
Nah, it couldn't be lung cancer.
For one thing, it doesn't run in the family, and, secondly, I've never smoked a day in my life. Although, when you think about it, you could say that I smoked for the first 18 years of my life. You could say that because my Dad smoked, and he thought nothing about holding his infant son in the crook of one arm, while holding a cigarette in the hand of his other. And blowing smoke out of the corner of his mouth, besides.
To be fair to my Dad, this was back in the days when doctors used to advertise for the cigarette companies, saying that smoking was good for you. It relaxed you. Made you calm. Woody Allen made fun of it years later in his movie Sleepers, where he played Miles Monroe, a part owner of The "Happy Carrot" Health-Food Store, who goes into the hospital for a routine exploration of a minor peptic ulcer, and wakes up 200 years later.
A doctor is giving him a physical after he's woken up, and offers him a cigarette. Allen refuses, because tobacco causes cancer. The doctor just laughs this off.
"Cancer? Nah," he says. "Cigarettes are one of the healthiest things for your body."
Or something like that.
I remember, as a kid, telling myself that I'd never date a girl who smoked. However, when my hormones kicked in, and dating girls went from being a theory to actually being a reality, I rethought my position. I remember thinking, "Why limit my dating potential?"
If I limited myself to only the girls who didn't smoke, I'd be eliminating an important group of girls, namely the easy ones. I don't know if it's true across the board or not, but girls I dated who smoked never seemed too difficult a challenge, if you get my drift. Same with drinking. When I was younger, I used to joke to my friends, "Thank God for alcohol, otherwise I wouldn't get lucky half as often as I do."
But I digress...
At any rate, I decided it couldn't be lung cancer.
Maybe a brain tumor? A blood clot? Do I have an aneurysm waiting inside my head like a ticking time bomb? I have a brother-in-law who's on his second stroke. The first stroke paralysed half his face. When he was a little boy I guess he didn't listen to his mother when she told him, "Be careful, or your face will freeze that way."
When we went to visit him, I remember leaning over and whispering to my wife, "I thought half his face was frozen. He looks the same to me."
She turned so that my sister couldn't see, and gave me the ugliest look I had ever seen. I wanted to tell her, "Careful, or your face will freeze that way," but I knew I couldn't say it out loud without laughing, so I kept it inside of me. I'd tell her later. When she wasn't giving me such a dirty look.
He eventually regained the full use of his face. That is, until his second stroke. Now he's in the same boat as before.
"You know," I whispered to my wife. "I actually think he looks better. Ow!"
That came from a quick elbow to my ribs.
That look. That look.
But I'm digressing again...
I need reading glasses. My hearing's going bad. I feel like I'm losing more brain cells than the average bear. I have a bum ticker that's not pumping enough blood to my brain, and , when my wife is "in the mood," it causes a quarter of that blood to be redirected to another part of my body. Most men would die if they lost that much blood. Well, anyway...
After several spells, and a few that caused me to sit back down before I fell on my head, I made an appointment to see my doctor.
At his office, they gave me the usual physical. They tested all my vital organs (and not in the fun way), and checked my vision and hearing. I peed in a plastic cup, and they sent me out for some blood work. Everything came out okay. I would say the only glitch was that I had aged ten years in only one.
How? You ask.
Well, on the last physical I had, which was just a year ago, the doctor told me that I was as healthy as a man a decade younger. This time, the doctor told me that I was healthy for a man my age. You do the math.
After all the tests I had to make an appointment to see my doctor. It's funny, when you're making an appointment, they'll give you one that's weeks--maybe months--in the future, and then when you finally see the doctor he'll tell you, "Why didn't you see me sooner?"
Anyway, at my appointment, the doctor was reviewing the results of all my test.
"Looks good, looks good, looks good," he nodded, nodded, nodded, and then looked up. "Remind me why you're here again?"
"Well, doc," I started, maybe a bit too familiar for my own good. "When I sit for a long time, and then get up suddenly, I get dizzy. Sometimes I have to steady myself so I don't fall down."
The doctor took this in. I wondered if I had given him enough information, but what else I could tell him? Maybe I could get up and mime what happens. Maybe I would have, but more than I hate mimes, I hate looking foolish.
He looked at me with that serious look that all doctors and prosecutors have. Meanwhile, I'm stressing out that perhaps, like Walter White, I might only have a short time to live.
I'm planning, Just how DO you make crystal meth? I'm wondering, Will Sancho be the one to spend the inheritance I won't live to see? I'm thinking, Ok, doc, I can take it. Give it to me straight. I won't cry.
Much.
The doctor gets up to leave--appointment over--and reaches for the door. As he opens it, he tells me "There's nothing wrong with you. Just don't get up so fast."
And he leaves. My money walking out the door right behind him.
Meanwhile, I'm still alive.
I guess he was right.
Raising My Father
RaisingMyFather.blogspot.com
jimduchene.blogspot.com Fifty Shades of Funny
@JimDuchene
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