Dead Reckoning ~ The Medical Maze

Hospitals, medical complexes, doctors. Good to know that they're around, but for the most part they're people and places that I've tried to avoid. Still, over the years I guess I've spent far more time around them than most folks not in the medical field.

One reason was my first wife when she attended the University of Miami Medical School followed by a three year residency at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Another long spell hanging out around hospitals was when I got some photography asignments from a large public relations firm. That in turn led to working directly with the public relations departments of four or five area hospitals, but not all at the same time, of course.

Now I'm off on a new adventure, a new aspect of my life. I turned 65 and suddenly I'm able to spend Medicare's money. Shortly before my birthday I went in for my quarterly "poke 'n prod". My blood pressure was fine, heart sounded good, lungs sounded clear, Larry was able to draw a blood sample, all the usual stuff, then he grabbed a pad of forms and had one of the women at the front desk start making phone calls as he scribbled away. Time to set me up to get X-rays and scans, check everything out in excruciating detail, find out if my ticker really looks as good as it sounds, maybe see if I actually have a brain in that head of mine and not just fertilizer for growing hair.

So here I was, trying to figure out exactly which building I was supposed to be entering. They're not numbered very well. I think this was the one where I had to remove all the metal from my pockets and they rolled me into a big tubular thing after warning me that a lot of people couldn't stand the noise, but it wouldn't last very long, while other folks freaked out from being enclosed like that. It wasn't all that bad. So far the test results pretty much all say that I'm good to go for another thirty years or there abouts. I went outside and lit up a cigarette. When you're on a winning streak why risk changing anything?