Senior Karma

One of my useful peculiarities is that I am very relaxed around doctors.   While others I know … including my darling wife … stress out before every examination and procedure, I just take it all in stride, which is a good thing as I get older.  Why is it that as we age, the number of places we need to be examined increases exponentially?   Anyway, I’ve always believed that in spite of some of the shortcomings of our medical system, we are lucky to live in an age when simple illnesses … and sometimes serious ones … don’t kill us.   My experience with the medical profession has been good, too, with a few notable exceptions like the cardiologist who implied I had colon cancer when I just needed an iron supplement.  I’ve been lucky to have good doctors.  I’ve also always had male doctors.

As part of my senior health assessment … that’s what they call an annual physical at my age … my (male) doctor suggested I have an ultrasound.  For a number of years, I’ve had a condition known as a hydrodcele which is very common in old(er) men.   Every year my doctor says, It’s a hydrocele, nothing to worry about, and I go home happy until eight or nine months later when I read an article about Lance Armstrong and get worried again.   This time, my doctor said, It’s still a hydrocele but let’s do an ultrasound to make you feel better about it.  Now, in case you didn’t follow my link or catch the Lance Armstrong reference, the swelling known as a hydrocele occurs south of the navel and north of the knees.  There are only two places it can occur.  You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?  It was a testicular ultrasound.

When I was a younger man and in triathlon shape, I’d take my afternoon runs in just shorts and swim my laps in a red Speedo.  I looked good and I knew it.  But beyond that, I’m a modest man, particularly now that my body is in blogging, not triathlon, shape.  So, as I was leaving the house this morning, I said to Muri, I hope the radiologist is a man.  Muri, said, Yeah, really, managing to sound sympathetic even though she’d endured pelvic exams by a male gynecologist for years.  I mean, if someone’s going to be poking around down there with a greasy probe, I want it to be a man.   I was hoping for fifty year old Gus.   What I got was thirty year old Gillian.  I’ll be doing your examination, she said.  Nervous and wanting to break the tension (mine), I said, Did you draw the short straw?  She didn’t get it.  To have to do the exam on a sixty-seven year old man, I added.  Awwww, she said, realizing I was embarrassed (making me more so), I do this all the time, it’s nothing to me.  Hmmm.   Take off your clothes and lie down on the bed, she said handing me a small rectangle of terry cloth, and cover yourself with this towel.  I covered myself.

So, I got to put this here and cover that with a towel and Jillian went about her business for about fifteen minutes.  Who knew there was that much to look at?  She was efficient and professional and reasonably gentle.  And yes, readers, it is possible for a sixty-seven year old man to blush for fifteen minutes.  When she was done, she handed me a towel and said, We’re all done, go ahead and clean up.  I resisted the urge to say, You made the mess.  You clean it up!  At that point, all I wanted to do is get my pants back on.  So for all the times I wasn’t sympathetic when Muri went off to her gynecologist … and for all the times I thought, Get over it, when I heard a woman complaining about having a pelvic exam … I’m sorry.   I guess life is for learning.  And karma … even Senior Karma … is a bitch.

As is usual with radiology technicians, Jillian wouldn’t tell me any results and when they look around for so long, you wonder, even though they’re usually just being thorough.  I see my doctor on Tuesday.  If you’re so inclined, toss a little prayer my way.

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Tags: curmudgeonly rants, feeling older, health, humor, senior health

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