The other day I went to the doctor for my yearly check up. They poked and prodded me almost to death. The nurse took blood from my arm, checked my blood pressure, my oxygen saturation and my temperature. Her bony fingers pecked away at the black iPad as she did all of this. I just sat quietly and let her go through the motions. She had unusually long, bony looking fingers. They were cold every time she touched me too.
It’s a yearly checkup, but I guess she had to ask, “and why are we seeing you today?” Well, I just couldn’t resist the temptation. I started to tell her I had been abducted by aliens or assaulted by a Sasquatch, but I stuck with keeping it simple. I told her, I’m here because I’m fat, my knees hurt and I have chest pains fairly often.
Aghast, she looked at me and said how often to you have chest pains and where are these pains located? Well, I have them fairly often, almost everyday. Where are these pains located, she asked with a very serious look on her face. Well, it hurts in my chest like I said before. On the left side or the right, she asked in a serous voice.
Errrrr, kind of in the middle, not so much one side or the other. She furrowed her brow and pecked the iPad furiously, then hurried out of the cold little room.
It wasn’t just a few minutes and Doc and the little bony fingered nurse came in the room. He’s what I call a country doctor. He’s got cows, a horse or two and he likes to tell me about the surgeries he’s done to the critters on his farm. We usually end up visiting a while when I go see him.
As usual doc wouldn’t to concerned as he read through the notes. He said kind of nonchalantly, “So what’s up with the chest pains?” I told him I have them almost everyday. He asked me what time of day do they occur.
I’d never thought about it until he asked, but then I realized it is almost always when I get to the second pasture each morning feeding. When I told him this he kind of grunted and read some stuff on the iPad. Then he peered over his glasses at me and asked, And how many cups of coffee have you had by this time each morning? Oh, maybe five. Doc snorted like a horse that just spotted a rattlesnake. “And what do you eat for breakfast each morning?” His words getting a tad bit louder and more like a lawyer in a courtroom questioning a convicted bank robber. Well, most mornings I eat ffa sausage, bacon and fried eggs.
Doc looked at me the way a coyote looks at an injured bunny rabbit and said, “and do you take any tums or acid reducers with you when you’re feeding? No sir, those cost money, I blurted out before realizing I’d just admitted to being too tight to buy medicine.
He frowned at me for what seemed like a full minute. Then he said, “ok, here’s what we’re going to do.” I’m putting you on cholesterol medicine, a dose of vitamins that might help with your knees and I’m telling your wife to take the keys to the UTV so you’ll walk more. You need to cut out the bad food and loose about thirty pounds. You need to exercise and have some common sense about coffee intake. You are only allowed two cups of coffee a day until the next visit, AND I don’t want any excuses about calving, hay or whatever else. YOU WILL COME SEE ME AGAIN IN A MONTH. Then he looked at the bony fingered nurse and said, “You make sure to call his wife and give HER the date of his next checkup or he won’t come, and you tell her to hide those keys to the UTV good. He needs to walk three miles a day or an hour a day, whichever is longer. As he got up to leave he told her to look for some samples of tums or any other acid reducers that’s in the medicine room. As he went out the door he muttered something about tums only cost a dollar……
Dang, not having my buggy to ride, having to walk, only two cups of coffee, cholesterol medicine too. I guess if doc says do it and then tells the wife I’m as good as done for. Doc says, the wife says, the preacher says. The preacher did preach on gluttony and submitting to wise counsel, I guess I should’ve known that was a warning……
James Lockhart lives near the Kiamichi mountains in southeast Oklahoma. He writes cowboy stories and fools with cows and horses.
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