What is it about men and doctors? I mean why do so many of us fear the doctor? I'm sure that for some it's the fear of the unknown. Personally, I've had some bad experiences with doctors so I think I'm justifiably wary. I'm not saying that all doctors should be tarred with the same brush but in the last fifty years I've had three visits to the doctor that didn't go quite the way a doctors visit should.
There was the time I accidentally stuck an awl just above my kneecap. Minor really but my leg stiffened right up and I could barely walk. I lived in a small town at the time so as I was heading down the main street on my way home I noticed the doctor's office still had the lights on. Good enough..., I peered in the window but didn't see any activity so I knocked on the door and what greeted me was nearly enough to send fleeing like a scared rabbit but..., my leg wasn't working real well remember?
Anyhow..., in the doorway stood the town doctor with his wool socks barely clinging to his feet, his shirt tail hanging out of the zipper on his pants, his hair askew, and a six-shooter strapped to his side. I didn't know whether to crap my drawers or go blind.
Curiously enough I followed him into his office willingly. He was wobbling a bit but not totally out of control. When he came at me with a hypodermic needle for a tetanus shot though I had to grab his hand, take the needle from him and ask him how I should administer it. He was shaking just a tad too much for my liking. Bad experience numero uno!
Then just a couple of years later I was working at a coal mine just inside the British Columbia border. It was a small company town and the doctor only showed up once a week. I had skinned my knuckle a few days earlier and infection had set in causing it to swell up and look real ugly.
I sat in the doctor's office for most of the morning and was a bit curious as to why everyone coming out of the examination room looked visibly shaken or chuckled nervously as they left. Before too long it was my turn and as I walked through the door I immediately knew why the others before me had reacted the way they had.
Sitting behind the desk, barely upright, was a relatively young doctor slouched down in his chair, saliva running from the corner of his mouth, and slurring his words so bad I thought he was going to fall asleep mid-sentence. It was apparent he had been doing a little pharmaceutical research!
The town nurse, who was easily twice his age, barged in at this point and proceeded to give the poor slob a stern lecture concerning self-medication. The whole while he just sat there with a goofy grin on his face. She had no sooner finsished when the doctor, to my utter amazement, stood up and made his way around to my side of the desk without falling flat on his face. The nurse just glared at him with a look that should have tipped him over.
The doctor took a cross-eyed look at my swollen finger, grabbed an aerosol can from the shelf beside him and sprayed my finger with some kind of "winter in a can" that left actual frost on my knuckle. Thankfully the nurse butted in at this point and led me out of the room and into another where she proceeded to drain the infection and dress the wound. No words were exchanged but when we left the examination room she made an announcement to the rest of the patients still patiently waiting. She told them to go home and come back the following week. I left the clinic at a brisk pace.
The next incident I recall was when I got bit by a dog and went up to the hospital to have the bite looked into. The doctor was actually very good and well respected in the community so I really wasn't too concerned, other than my thumb felt like it was ready to throb off. We hoofed it down to the emergency operating room and the whole while I tried to keep from passing out. Once seated, the doctor cleaned up the wound which had me howling like a cat with it's tail in the fan belt.
There was a nurse present and when the doctor was done poking and prodding he directed her to give me an intramuscular shot of bug killer to the hind quarters. She prepared the injection and he left the examination room and proceeded down the hall. I rolled off the examination table, lowered my drawers and bent over as instructed. The nurse harpooned me and within seconds I got a horrible medicinal taste in my mouth, started having trouble breathing and started to get real dizzy, real fast. I rolled myself back onto the examination table to the sound of the nurse running down the hall screaming, "I need a doctor right now, It's an emergency," echoing in my ears.
The next twenty minutes were the definition of surreal as I lay there surrounded by a whole team of doctors and nurses, one with the 'booster cables', another with a syringe of adrenalin, one doctor with a stethoscope to my chest and another taking my blood pressure. It ended rather quickly - when it finally ended - as my eyes quit rotating and the words of the entourage returned to earth. Spooky stuff - just glad they didn't have to restart me with the booster cables!
It was several years later, when I was telling the story to a nurse I met, that I finally received an explanation for what had happened. She told me, "With an intramuscular injection the proper procedure is to withdraw the plunger slightly to see if blood enters the syringe. If it does then it's likely the needle has hit a vein." Apparently I had taken my dose of bug killer right into the blood stream.
Anyhow..., I haven't been to the doctor for quite some time and I have an appointment this afternoon. I'm a wee bit nervous as you may well imagine. If I survive, you will read about it here.
Check back regularly, no telling what little nugget of gnarled knowledge or whimsical wisdom you're going to unearth here but it could be an 'nervous patient nugget' they can arrive without warning.
Hasta La L8r Señor Chicken Man which, by the way, has no connection to 'Avian Flu'
[Update]:: I live to tell another! Someday I'm going to tell you what a sigmoidoscopy is all about. That will tone up your splincter!
