Occasionally I manage to see eye to eye with doctors.
Mainly when one of THEM is gouging some foreign object out of one of MINE.
Doctor’s eyes appear like a pair of intergalactic flying saucers when viewed from my side of a surgical magnifying glass.
Through these portals you can see all the way into their generous, caring, modest, sensitive souls.
*pause*
Astute readers will notice that normally, when an opportunity like this presents, GOF’s little story would be embellished with a surplus of gratuitous and totally unnecessary sarcasm. …….well, I would like to proudly announce that I’ve just successfully completed a course at Sarcastics Anonymous this week.
Praise the Lord. I am reformed.
*resume*
Five years ago I found a doctor who accepts my conditions of engagement, which severely limit the types of diagnostic tests he is permitted to carry out, and bans totally any digital examination in places where it has no right to be.
He is my emergency trauma repairer, and just one of several consultants in the field of my health management.
On those occasions when I had to visit him, I always requested a blood pressure check so I could feel as though I was getting a little more value for the money he expected in return.
It’s not like I felt bad about the amount he charges….I know that he desperately needed my little donation just to buy a litre or two of benzine to put into his derelict outdated 2009 model Mercedes horseless carriage so that he could go home later in the day with enough survival rations to feed his starving family and support their meagre subsistence lifestyle.
On the last appointment with Doctor Wonderful my blood pressure was 140/95 which he said was “OK……considering.”
Perhaps he was “considering” the stress I was under, thinking about having to hand over the cash.
My own assessment was that both values were too high, so I decided to do some monitoring of my own with one of these nifty devices (below) before beginning a program of self-medication with aspirin like most of my neighbours, including our now famous spiritual leader Saint Martin of FOT.
So, elated with my new toy, whenever visitors arrived at GOF’s Place, the first thing I did was to slap a blood pressure meter cuff on ’em.
Good entertainment for me, but so many of them left with a dreadful fear that they might be struck down by massive coronary attacks before they had driven the 6 kilometres back up the mountain through the bush to the bitumen road where there is the medical safety net of mobile phone coverage.
The Bush Telegraph however still works well around these parts.
We don’t get many visitors anymore.
Smartarse behaviour inevitably attracts comeuppance.
Mine was in the form of consistent BP readings around 90/60.
I don’t really want to know why all the red stuff is apparently just sloshing around inside me willy-nilly without much direction from the conductor of my circulatory orchestra.
If I don’t feel broke, then I don’t need to fix me.
Does anyone want to buy a stupid sphygmomanometer? Cheap.
Oh yes, and I might need to attend just one more S.A. meeting.
I came very close to having a relapse back there.