“Why. yes, I have some open appointment times tomorrow. – Come on in and we’ll play ‘You Bet Your Life!’ “
The Eagle had to visit his cardiologist’s office Thursday afternoon. We were in the waiting room just long enough to sample the reading material.
For some reason, we have learned that much of the niche attention span market in the waiting areas of doctors servicing “older” people are loaded with cute little musings about the aging experience – or the general condition of our growing need for a variety of medical specialists. That said, it’s really nothing new. It’s simply the “yang” hemisphere of our older life taking over for the “yin” period of our younger salad days consequential investments.
When I was a young man, just out of college, but working enough to have expendable income for the first time ever, I probably spent a minimum of three nights a week on my favorite pursuits of “wine, women, and song.” Now, as an elder states-person, with no real record of civil service history flapping in the winds behind me over the years, my three most common weekly investments of time are spent on trips to various medical specialist offices – simply to give the doctors a chance to monitor my consequential health issues – and an opportunity to update my health plan coverage as one the factors that will determine how soon I need to come back.
The “cute little musings” that we find in print seem to be part of our patient compensation reward for needing to be there in the first place. At least, I think so. I’ve never met a medical doctor yet with either the sense of humor of a genius comic or the soul of a great poet – and spending five minutes with a doctor in his examining room is an experience that I have never found funny – or soulfully/intellectual fulfilling. In fact, all of my doctor trips – going back to the few I knew as a child – were nothing like some of the gems that still live in the ancient Henny Youngman joke bag:
Henny Youngman
Henny Youngman (from Time Immemorial)
” In the office, I waved my hands very hard for ten seconds. I told my doctor that it hurts when I do that. – My doctor says, “Then don’t do that.”
“My doctor says, “Take off all your clothes – and go stand by the window.” – “Why should I?” I asked. – “I’m mad at my neighbor,” he says.
“Well, Doc,” I asked, “how do I stand?” – “That’s what I’m trying to figure out,” he answers.
Now let me amend something I said. No matter how medically competent they may have been, none of my doctors ever came close to being Henny Youngman-funny. If Youngman had been my doctor, ever, I’d probably be dead by now, but, at least, I’d be gone and long ago embalmed with a smile upon my face.
Here are a couple of the soul-smile items I found today in a waiting room freebie newspaper called the Houston Senior News, March 2016:
Doc said six months (from Gene Miller)
A man went to the doctor. He told the doctor he was dizzy and seeing white spots. The doctor said he had six months to live.
The man quit his job, went on trips, and did the things he had postponed for later.
He decided to buy a new tailor-made suit. The tailor measured his arm length, waist, leg length and so forth.
The tailor measured him for a new shirt and found his neck size was 16 1/2. The man said, “No, I’ve been wearing size 15 for years, so make it a size 15.”
The tailor said, “Well. okay, but you will be dizzy and see white spots if you wear your shirt too tight.”
Fun with Medical Terms and Their Phonetic Interpretations (By Anonymous*)
Artery … The study of paintings
Bacteria … Back door to the Cafeteria
Barium … What doctors do when patients die
Benign … What you be, after you be eight
Cesarean Section … A neighborhood in Rome
Cat scan … Searching for Kitty
Cauterize … Made Eye contact with her
Colic … A sheep dog
Coma … A punctuation mark
Dilate … To live long
Enema … Not a friend
Fester … Quicker than someone else
Fibula … A small lie
Impotent … Distinguished, well known
Labor Pain … Getting hurt at work
Medical Staff … A Doctor’s cane
Morbid … A higher offer
Nitrates … Cheaper than day rates
Node … I knew it
Outpatient … A patient who has fainted
Pelvis … Second cousin to Elvis
Post Operative … A letter carrier
Recovery Room … Place to do upholstery
Rectum … Dang near killed him
Secretion … Hiding something
Seizure … Roman emperor
Tablet … A small table
Terminal Illness … Getting sick at the airport
Tumor … One plus one more
Urine … Opposite of you’re out
* Now that you’ve read the writer’s material, it may be easier to see why authorship was attributed to “Anonymous”
__________________
The Pecan Park Eagle hopes that all of you are having fun with your own age-related “yin” and “yang” – that is, if you are now old enough to both – have one of each – and mature enough to realize their consequential relationship to each other. – All I can say about “life” tonight is – “TGIF” – “Thank God It’s Funny (sometimes)”.
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Bill McCurdy
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 20, 2016 at 8:20 pm |
Saw the same list of medical terms somewhere. The one I ran across had an additional term, though: Fetus – A character in Gunsmoke.