Pass The Cheese And Quackers

Medical specialists may seem like dull people, with their narrow focus and all, but they have fun at parties. I know this now.

Let me back up. I've had a long-standing policy of avoiding non-recreational drugs. I'll step into a small nest of antibiotics if they're called for, but I think the prescription drug business is a racket and a trap, especially the older you get. No one ever seems to get off of their meds, and instead they get more and more of them, and the meds start playing with each other and not with you, until all you are is a hollow host for pharmaceuticals. A lot of older people I know are having more trouble with their drugs than they are with whatever they're supposed to be treating. I don't want to jump on that train.

Which is all well and good, inasmuch as nothing really bad ever happens to me. It's been an easy policy to carry out, so far. And yet, out of sheer irritability, I got myself on a drug. I went in to the Ear Nose and Throat guy because of my chronically clogged crustacean tubes and he looked in my ears and up my nose and down my throat, because that's pretty much his whole sad life, right there. And he declared my hearing perfect and my crustacean tubes open on both ends.

"But they're not," I insisted. "Particularly the left one. In fact, the only time it's opened up in the last eight months has been when I've been on an airplane." I'm aware this is completely backwards, but there you go. People have been known to drive their babies around to get them to sleep; I'm wondering how long I can be allowed to stay at 30,000 feet, because it's like a little slice of heaven up there.

"Well," he said, "if it's even a tiny bit clogged, it can feel uncomfortable, I suppose," he said, thickly implying that I have inserted an imaginary bean in the middle of perfectly serviceable crustacean tubes that are obviously open on both ends. "Tell you what," he went on. "We can put you on Flonase. Sometimes that will clear things up. But I have to warn you: too many times people give up on it too early. You have to take it for at least two months before it takes effect."

Flonase. Great. A liquid you shoot up your nose. I've spent decades trying to keep liquids out of my nose. But I was irritated that this doctor thought I had a fantasy ailment, and yet had a treatment for it. I'd had my heart set on relief; I gave it a go. I was given six months' worth of nose juice. What could go wrong?

The pamphlet was helpful. Do not take Flonase if you're allergic to Flonase. Avoid people who are sick or have infections. Avoid spraying in eyes. Close one nostril; carefully insert applicator into the other nostril. Oh! The other nostril. Check.

Three months in, I've noticed no change in my condition whatsoever. A drug with 120 doses in one tiny bottle doesn't seem like it could be too dangerous, but I decided to look it up online.

Well hey!  You can overdose on the stuff. Evidently you can go blind,  your bones can shatter, and you might develop "fullness of face, neck, and trunk, increased facial hair, and a lack of menstrual periods." All of which describe me to a tee. Also, it's for congestion, sneezing, runny nose, or itchy or watery eyes due to allergies. None of which I have. This is nuts. I must stop taking this shit now.

But he did say it takes a long time before I'll see any effect. I'd hate for the first three months to be wasted. Maybe I'll give it another few weeks.

The doctor is yukking it up at the Medical Specialist parties. "Did it again," he's saying. "I got one to spray shit up her nose for no reason whatsoever. And get this," he pauses to dab his eyes, "I told her she wouldn't notice anything for at least two months," and the rest of the guests guffaw and splutter into the cheese plate. Glasses clink all around. The pharmaceutical rep has to cross his legs, he's so overcome.  Only the proctologists are having more fun.

They Didn't Mind The Quack Quack Quack

Kaiser Permanente is a highly regarded health maintenance organization, and I like them well enough. Certainly I do not count myself among all those whiners you hear complaining about how they took off the wrong leg and stuff, like they're so perfect. I mean, they can do that only once at most, and then it's problem solved.

They've never offered to take anything off of me. I had a fatty deposit on my eyeball once that they figured could stay put. Got something they call fibroid tumors growing inside me and something else hanging out of my urethra like a damn pee deflector, and their surgeons won't get out of bed for any of those, either. They won't even slice off the mole where my eyebrow used to be. Sucker is big enough to throw shade but the only C-word they keep using is "cosmetic." During my colonoscopy, everything looked so good that they not only didn't nip anything out, but they didn't even need to clean the itty bitty camera afterwards. All they ever do when I point out potentially fatal conditions is offer to keep an eye on things.

That's the real problem with Kaiser. They never find anything wrong with me. I've explained to anyone who still listens that there's something wrong with my heart. It skips and flutters and doesn't kick in on a hike until I've gone a quarter mile or so, when it finally says oh fine and starts working again, and sure, then it gets me up a mountain and back, but you can't tell me people don't die in the first quarter mile. They do.

The doctors humor me. They've stuck electrodes on me and put me on a treadmill and hooked me up to machines and did a lung function test and most anything I've asked them to do, and everything always comes out just fine. They're quacks.

Take the other day. My crustacean tubes have been clogged up since I got the flu in February, so I consulted the Ear Nose and Throat contingency. They gave me a hearing test. They stuck doo-dads in my ears and disappeared into a different room and had me push a button when I heard things. Well, evidently, they haven't seen such a good hearing test on an old lady in ages. They couldn't stop gushing about it. Evidently, I could track whales from fifty miles inland. But heck. They stuck the sounds right in my ears. I'd like to see them try it from a few yards away, behind the crustacean tubes' backs.

That's what the nurse-lady did when I was taking my physical exam for postal work back in the '70s. She got at one end of the hall and asked me to repeat what she said, getting softer all the time. "Pancake," she said. "Pancake," I said back. "What?" she said.

That's how you conduct a hearing test. Well, it was silly anyway. Letter carriers never listen to anyone. They had us lift a seventy-pound sack, which was at least germane to the job. For the rest, they could have just dispensed with the physical and issued us bullet-proof vests, and we'd have been fine for anything that was likely to come up in the station.

So the ENT doctor came in and said more nice things about my hearing test and looked in my throat, where he claims he saw my crustacean tubes winking at him and looking tip-top, and then he looked in my ears and told me, breathlessly, that I had beautiful ear drums, and wrote me a prescription for Flonase just for the hell of it and called it a day. They're all about the flattery, Kaiser. Apparently I am a pink paragon of perfection.

Basically, they don't think I'm ever going to die of anything, and that's just medically incompetent. They have no credibility. I'm not buying any of it until someone peers down my throat and up my butt and between my toes and tells me it looks like I have a touch of being about to be hit by a bus.

And they're going to want to keep an eye on that.

Influenza A (H3N2)

With bowsprit

Okay, all hands on deck. Wash them first.

I was hoping there wouldn't be a reason to have to haul you all out here like first-year recruits, but something has to change. The Ship Of Murr is not in good shape. I'm sure you've all noticed that no beer has gone down the hatch for ten days and counting. Has it. All righty then.

And there has been no beer going down not because the Ship Of Murr is mean, or a sorry place to work, or someone vetoed the pipeline. No. It is because the Ship Of Murr had expected a mere minimum of maintenance and care from its crew, and those expectations have not been met. Instead the crew has invited everybody and his buggy cousin on board without any consideration of the consequences. The Ship Of Murr blames herself. She has never wanted to be one of those taskmaster types, all stern and demanding, preferring to believe that if everyone was content, they would all pull together and row as needed out of simple comity. There have been no edicts about behavior and nutrition and exercise, no palming the entire venture off onto Leviticus, no shortage of forgiveness. And that, she fears, has led to a culture of negligence that might as well be mutiny.

And as a result of the singular lack of discretion in inviting folks we don't even know onto the Ship Of Murr--"they're with the band," blah blah blah--we have been drifting in a tiny little circle for days and days and days. Did it even occur to anyone to check for viral contraband? Can anyone remember who's supposed to be in charge of the rudder? Because clearly nobody is in charge of the rudder.

This is not the sprightly party boat it once was, with the fresh paint and the champagne stain on the bow. Gone are the days we can load  up at the dock with sketchy strangers and celebrate into the wee hours. Back then we somehow found a way to set everything back shipshape within a day, and maybe we were a little lost and things looked a little foggy, but it's a big ocean, with not a lot to run into. We picked up our share of dings and scrapes and you never heard one word about it from the captain. Did you.

No, because the Ship Of Murr never thought the dings were that important. The Ship Of Murr always thought there were better things to do than keep up appearances. But now we're picking up barnacles at an accelerating rate. We're trailing weed. We look like shit, frankly, and that's still okay. But it does mean we're slowing down. We can't turn on a dime anymore.

And while you're all here, no poop deck jokes. It's beneath you. It's too easy. And none of you even knows what a poop deck is. Face it, you're not sailors. You're freeloaders. And it's time you shaped up. I shouldn't have to point out that there is a veritable shitload of phlegmy crap coating everything below-decks, and it ain't going to clean itself up. Don't even look at the cilia--they're doing the best they can, but they're overwhelmed. Start swabbing. Just because the little princesses that are supposed to be operating the crustacean tubes are on strike again doesn't mean everyone gets to sit on his entitled little fanny.

Not talking about you, pancreas. We don't any of us know what it is you do, but you must still be doing it, because we're still underway.

Maybe some day we'll get engulfed in a flocculent plume of whale poop or maybe we'll get systematically punctured by albatrosses irritated about the plastic gyre situation, but one way or another, this ship isn't going to sail forever. You want the ride to be as long and pleasant as possible, and you want your beer rations back, you'll exercise a little more caution.

Now clean this place up.