Went to the Doc this past week for my yearly physical. It’s something that usually comes with a bit of trepidation, and not just of the open backed hospital gown you’re told to put on by the nurse to make it easier for the “drop your shorts and bend over” rubber glove moment. No, there is always that little bit of trepidation as to the results of the blood test, the piss cup, the listening to the chest and the blood pressure take.
How have I fared in this last year … has shit finally caught up with me?
But this Doc is a good one, comfortable, so friendly and so smart and always seems to genuinely enjoy catching up with me, see how I’ve been doing. I look forward to this part of easing my said trepidation as I’ll eventually find out about how her kids are and how they’re not really “kids” any longer, College days and High School seniors now (damn, I guess I’ve been seeing this doc for quite a while). I’ll hear of her cats today, including the young one with some food allergies who breaks her heart with tap taps on her leg beggings at dinner time. I’ll tell her of mine and how there are just two now as my Memes has passed since the last time we did this hospital gown and conversation thing. I’ll tell her the story of how Mimi the Quirky was my fragile weird old girl who adopted me when she snuck up the stairs and just latched onto and owned me in her last two years, finally a human to call her own in her old with no distractions of too many others as can be the case downstairs.
The numbers start getting rattled off in Doc speak and with each my trepidation lessens, in her confident sounding ease, well with most I should say, some of them need attention but nothing over the top (maybe a light mayo for the cholesterol of my sandwiches moving forward I think, stop mainlining lard and fried things) and of the blood pressure which has been a little high for the last couple of years and now requires me be an old guy at the pharmacy. Whodathunk I might eventually need a blood pressure medication? Twice now. Hopefully this one won’t make my face blow up like the last with Angelina Jolie lips. According to my Endo Doc though, that kind of allergic reaction only happens to 5% of people who are prescribed it. Guess I’m kinda special that way.
But that was certainly something, pretty, but something.
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Celie notes I’m home early when I get to the house and I tell her of my appointment at the Doc, appointments I try to set for just that reason, to get me home just a little bit earlier, even for just one day, but with a reasonable excuse and of how everything went pretty well and how I’ve somehow been able to fake a semblance of healthy for yet another year (though still looking over my shoulder) minus the blood pressure of course.
She suggests I start going to the gym to which I probably shouldn’t have blurted out so harshly “Oh, Hell No girlfriend! That would require me hanging out in waaaay too close quarters with a bunch of folks that I can tell you right now that I probably don’t like and would like even less with them being all sweaty and stinky and too gym cool” as she was just offering up a kind suggestion.
Well, how about starting to go walking again like you used to she says? When shit got bad.
That I could do (again regretting my knee jerk).
I did like those walks, walks around the big nice house neighborhood up the hill with big nice cars and perfect lawns lined with short standing bricks and sprinkled with small porcelain pagan things it could be said, just with trademarked smiles or funny hats, things up the hill here at the COVID begin. It was a good way to escape from the overriding fear then and feel as if you were being productively healthy in any way you could to help fend off the monster. Plus, if COVID gave us anything else other than anger and loss and loss and anger it at least started when the weather was finally beginning to break, making the walks a little easier to take.
I took in the big nice house big nice car neighborhood in my slow footing then, only wishing I had one of the dogs from the house for company, for the normal, for a view through kitchen windows that said I was Ok, he’s just walking a dog, and I fascinated at such a neighborhood that some might aspire to, that I might have aspired to once, but as I walked my walks I could only think that they still have ghosts, things behind those walls, big nice house big nice car walls that are no different from anyone else’s. They love and hate each other and hide things just like the rest of us only a bit more upscale.
I think it might be time to take some new walks. You’re right Celie, as you always are, and even when you’re not I defer, just minus a dog and the wonderings through kitchen windows of who is this stranger walking alone in our perfect, not so perfect of spots.
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I parked BB the car and grabbed a water bottle. It’s been hot lately, been really hot lately, really hot everywhere, really hot in the yeah there is nothing to be concerned of in back pockets paid hot, water bottles the best and only defense you have and decided to get back to walking again damning the looks. I just need one of the dogs to walk with me to make me seem less of a concern in a big nice house big nice car neighborhood with secrets, seem more normal.
C’mon Georgia, let’s find you a collar. I got water. It’s hot girlfriend.
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