D-Day, D for Doctor

Rumination is natural for me, the kind that gets hold of something in the future and thinks about it, worries about it, puts it to rest then regurgitates it to worry about it some more, adding a worst-case scenario to the cud. I ruminate when the car makes a strange noise that even my wife can't hear. I ruminate when my body makes a strange noise or I could swear the mole on my chest has changed. The price of all commodities worries me because there is no corresponding increase in income so I ruminate. The GOP wants to end Social Security and Medicare as we know it and I ruminate.

The most fertile field for rumination is the month before a routine visit to the doctor. I used to go once a year and then they changed it to twice a year, ostensibly to rake in more money, but I cooperate, else my prescriptions won't be renewed. 

I sat in my portable rocking chair at our campsite last week and gazed at the panorama. Sixty-foot pines in front of a tranquil Wisconsin lake. As I breathed in the pine-scent my mind drifted as it always does and of course it drifted to my medical appointment on August 30. It was so quiet that I could hear my heart beating, and then with the medical thought it increased from sixty to 80. I know because I took my pulse. Again and again.

For males older than sixty the exams can become invasive, starting with the doctor's request that I drop my drawers. Anything involving my sub-equatorial region makes my heart race like an Indy 500 race car.

Recurrent rumination about the appointment stifled my serenity. My birthday was during this vacation and it only made me think that my age beckons the invasive procedure into my one-way "street." I can't tell why I am this way. I only know that panic ensues when the doctor breaches the subject of my prostate gland. I want to bolt right out the door, but that would violate this medical protocol in which I am trapped.

The vacation ended and the day came, D-Day of sorts and I resolved to face this with equanimity, bearing in mind Winston Churchill, "All we have to fear is fear itself," and thus steeled I approached one of the registration cubicles at the clinic. 

The registrar was a young man and that threw me because it was unusual. When he asked "How can I help you today," my response was delayed and before I responded he looked at me quizzically and I blurted, "You can do what it is that you do." I couldn't believe I had said that as he beckoned me "please, sit down."

"I'm not finding any appointment for you today, George."

This put me even further off stride, a reprieve. I lifted my foot from the acceleration pedal of my engine and it slowed. 

The young man peered into his computer screen as a seer into a crystal ball.

"I see that you changed your appointment to September 10 on May fourth. I'll see if Dr. Gardner has any cancellations for today."

I revved my engine again.

"No. Sorry, he's booked solid."

Again my engine slowed as the young man wrote me a new appointment card. Reprieved!

Now I have to handle another vacation with a latex, I mean medical appointment looming.