Mr.B, let me thank you for a summer of good health

One bonus of being a total advocate of healthy living is that annual check-ups provide opportunities to chat in a friendly fashion with your physician about their kids and hobbies. And I like my physician tons, so the annual check-in is like a yearly reunion. I always want to say we should have coffee sometime. Really, I just love my doc.

Yesterday, however, she really pushed me and tried hard to figure out if there maybe could be some small thing that she could note on my chart. I think she feels that it reflects poorly on her detection skills to put “perfect health,” especially since my first several dozen years of life were full of medical drama. How could it be that it all went away?

So she prodded me for more details.

Have you suffered a loss of appetite in the last year?
Nope – love to eat. [Doctors only pretend they want you to stay slim; once you’re at some lower weight level, they needle you about it all the time. The message is always clear: if you’re a normal human being, you should be getting fat! What the hell is wrong with you? You’re against candy bars and the sedentary life style? What kind of a freak are you anyway?]

Do you get tired during the day?
Nope.

Are you at all depressed? Would you like to see a counselor or are you just relying on friends with life’s issues?
Friends. Besides, I’m hearty Polish peasant stock. We don’t acknowledge depressive states. We go out and till the fields when the going gets tough.

Ah! It says on your chart that you had a bike accident in June. Any aftermath?
Well, the sprain in the thumb never totally healed because I use the hand so much…
Let me take a look…Still swollen! You need hand therapy! I have just the referral for you. Next week I want you to go to the Hand Clinic at UW Hospitals.

The Hand Clinic? There is a Hand Clinic? I have a slightly swollen thumb joint and I have to go to the Hand Clinic for therapy? People have psychiatrists, neurologists, cardiologist and I have a hand doctor? How awkward is that?

I detected a smug little look of satisfaction in my her eye as she scribbled out the referral.