No, I’ve not had any “work” done, and if I had, I’m not sure I’d go with the can-shaped look….
I think any of my old doctors back in the states, if they read this post, would laugh. I avoided them like the bloomin’ plague. I am the person who goes to the doctor the last possible second, the day before my prescription runs out. I am the person who uses the two week run up time to reschedule the appointment – for another two weeks away. And then another. Even here in the UK, where I can just pop by a doctor’s office without an appointment, they send me stilted form letters, and “invite me” to come and see them for a chat. I have resisted recent blandishments thus far.
Mainly because I am just fine, thank you. Mainly because Tech Boy is a paid-up member of the Home Surgery Network™ and short of needing to lop off his own head, makes do on his own. (It’s a Doctor’s kid trick.) Sometimes it is inevitable that Doctors and I should meet, what with being in ICU for eight days after a nontuberculosis mycobacterial infection spawned six months of a horrific pneumonia and infection – just a tip, kids, if you can’t walk across a parking lot without wheezing, or up a flight of stairs without stopping, and you can normally do so, stop being stupid and go to the ER, okay? – but for the most part, we exist in happily distant spheres.
Nobody likes shots, to be prodded and poked, and to have our private areas revealed, via flashlight and tongue depressor (and yes. My throat is very private, as are my ears). Nobody likes to be told to lose weight and get more exercise, to eat more fiber, to eat less salt, to get more sleep, or to lay off on high impact aerobics, because you only get one set of knees in this life, and any replacement set really never works as well. No one likes to be looked at, judged, and bossed, and so doctors get all of our muttering under our breath and rolled eyes and ignored orders… until we’re in pain or feverish or, you know, passing out every time we lie flat and our lungs fill up with fluid and we start to drown. Then, we listen (mostly) meekly, and swallow a bitter spoonful of “for your own good.” As anyone knows who hasn’t had access to them when needed: doctors and medical care are a luxury. A necessity. A privilege. Even when you have to fire them sometimes for not actually listening to you, as Mom just had to do, they are a privilege. A necessity.
My friend Beth served a clinical rotation in Tanzania as part of her medical school work. She wrote about the things she saw, the things she experienced; the parents who went without food so that their children could receive medical care, the crawling insects, the needless death. When I say the words necessity and privilege, I mean them, and I hope that my country can continue to have intelligent discourse on access to medical care, and its affordable and equal distribution to all people. I know what we could have, and I know what we hope to have… and I’m grateful for what we have.
So, for the grace of a sterile room with IV saline, a padded table loomed over by a lurid plastic skeleton; for posters of STD illustrations, pharmacy calendars, a “sharps” box, and autoclaved blankets, I am thankful – truly thankful, with no corner in my heart left dark and begrudging. It’s nice to know that the medical establishment is there, as long as I don’t have to see it up close.
amen.