Kickbacks Miscellaneous

Don't kick against the pricks, they kick back. Some take kickbacks. No getyabacksies. No kickyasbacksies.

I've had the song "In The Navy" in my head today, with various lyrics. One was to sing about a local doctor, whose name I will replace with some generic name with the right number of syllables:

Doctor Robertson,
You can tell him how you feel.
Doctor Robertson,
You will get a better deal.
Doctor Robertson,
There's no charge if you don't heal.
Doctor Robertson, Doctor Robertson.

Exercising Like Crazy

I had a doctor's visit today and everything checked out pretty well. According to him, and it's just one doctor's opinion, I'm essentially in perfect health. So that's nice to hear.

I've actually lost the conviction I had as a kid that nothing bad could happen to me, but with this kind of report maybe I wasn't too far off. I know what could happen now. Famous last words. Then my family, broken up over my sudden demise would go, Look at his last blog post. Nothing bad could happen to him. Struck down just like that.

To my family (after my demise), don't be so superstitious. No one's getting ready to strike me dead for having a tad bit of confidence. The doctor made me do it.

I had dropped off from doing very much exercise and he seemed to know I wasn't exercising as much. But I've resolved to be more faithful. So to that end I went to the exercise place and exercised like crazy tonight. It helped that I had some good music to rock out to, plus the confidence from my visit with him this morning. I went farther and faster than I have for a couple months.

The Pain Scale

I had the misfortune -- which is happening more and more these days -- of accompanying a loved one at the emergency room.

Usually when we're there we're in a private little room where there's very little activity. Today we were in the main room, where everything's separated by flimsy, moving curtains, and quarters are tighter.

All the time, in all these visits, they ask your pain on the scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being the worst possible. Sometimes it's 10, sometimes 9, sometimes 8, etc., meaning this is supposed to mean something -- and of course it does in ballpark figures. For instance, a 1 is objectively different from a 10, but a 9 is not objectively different from a 10, at least in the knowledge between people; perhaps it is to the person feeling it.

A doctor came in and asked the pain level, and she says not too bad, a 6. The doctor says a 6 is pretty bad. Right there we have all the evidence we need that the number doesn't mean anything definite. I said something to him about it and he didn't just laugh it off as an obvious conclusion, and instead said, "It means something to me." Yeah, it means you don't know any more about it now than before you asked. Or you wouldn't have argued with what the patient said.

Doctor's Appointment

It suddenly occurred to me that I have a doctor's appointment in the morning. It's one of those ones where I'm not supposed to eat anything after some particular time, maybe 6 p.m., I don't know for sure. Fasting, they call it. Which means I'll be super hungry tonight. Without the fasting rule, it wouldn't bother me as much.

If everything goes OK tomorrow, I'll be off the three month visit cycle and on to a six month cycle. That means the last couple times things have been going OK. So I'm happy about that and hope to keep it going tomorrow. I haven't been especially good when it comes to food and I haven't been especially bad. I just eat like normal. Except recently I've had eggs like three or four times a week, so I don't know if that'll show up as something bad. And bacon almost every morning, microwaved.

I feel about the same weight as usual, so hopefully that won't be an issue. And I've been exercising more or less faithfully, so I'll probably do OK on that.

Still, it's a drag to go to the doctor. The blood work, a terrible feeling. Peeing in a cup, probably, not a good thing, in my opinion.

Computer Down

My doctor's computer's down, so they don't know if you have an appointment today or not. If I drop dead, they won't know till the computer's up and running.

What about old Doc Hill, in the old building downtown, upstairs, with his name printed on the window? And a horse and buggy tied outside. He was keeping track of his patients all the time, at least giving them a bullet to bite on while they suffered. Didn't have a computer.

There was a prophecy told me by your average Radio Shack employee once, probably 1982 (thereabouts), that one day we'll all need a computer. At the time I was thinking of what computers were generally to be used for, as foretold in magazines of the time, which was keeping track of recipes and ... I think that was it. I doubted the guy's word.

Now I don't know if I have a doctor's appointment or not. I did have a hard copy, the card they give you at the time. But I lost it, no backup.