April 13, 2008

Dr. Potzanarck Prescribes a Bitter Pill

My recent doctor's visit was drawing to a close.  Doc Potz had groped and poked and prodded me with the standard, cool efficiency of an indifferent sadist, and he was now busily scrawling across his prescription pad.  This is one of the things I like best about Doc Potz ― not the groping, poking and prodding but, rather, the fact that, upon completing an exam, his first instinct is to instruct me to take more drugs.  Taking drugs is a good thing, or so I feel, because it sedates my normally cantankerous blood stream, and it removes from the discussion of health arcane and alien topics such as diet and exercise.

"I've had some memory problems," I blurted suddenly, privately proud of myself for having remembered to raise this problem with him.  "Nothing major," I went on, "but short-term things, and it only happens occasionally."  I pointed out that I can readily recall that the White Sox beat the Dodgers 11 - 0 in the first game of the 1959 World Series, but that the name of the current White Sox second baseman once, inexplicably, was lost to me for about twenty minutes.  I then asked if a vitamin supplement might be appropriate.

Doc Potz then leaned his scrawny frame back against his chair and smirked: "Stop smoking.  That's your problem."

"Why the Hell is stopping smoking the answer to everything?" I complained loudly.  I was aggravated by his remark.  About half of the people I know nag me that I should stop smoking, but I figure that if I wanted to be nagged I could have stayed married.

"It's not," the doc shot back.  "It's not causing the numbness in your hand or the pain in your leg.  That's why I'm scheduling you for an electromyography.

"Smoking can cause hardening of the arteries.  That reduces the flow of blood to your brain, and that affects your memory.  Given how much you smoke, you probably have the brain of a seventy-five-year-old."  Doc Potz fiddled with his sparse, auburn goatee, looking smug.

"So is that why I feel cranky so often?  Or does that mean that I should know what John McCain is thinking?"

Doc's lips wriggled like ticklish worms.  "No, John McCain has PTSD."

"Pittsburgh Pirates playing the San Diego Padres?" I asked, trying to make sense of the initials that he had spelled out for me.

"No, no.  Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.  He loses his temper easily, can be irritable, may be subject  to depression.  He got that from the war.  You have the same problems, but that's because you are a miserable misanthrope."

"So you're saying that Hillary Clinton is a heavy smoker?  Because what I've been saying is that I've had some memory problems lately, nothing major, but, well, you know, I don't remember right now whether I have ever been under any sniper fire, but ―"

"No, no, you do not have Hillary's brain."

"Are you sure?  Do you know if Tuzla has a baseball team?"

"Although you are beginning to look a bit like Bush's brain.  You need to lose weight, you know."

Now that got me angry.  Doc Potz was turning into a snippy little elitist, and I told him as much.

"You mean that I believe that our country should be ruled by people of superior intellectual capacities and moral values?  Why, yes I do."  Doc nestled his balding cranium deeply into the padding of his armchair and tittered.  He had become insufferable, and so I threw him my best shot.

"Well, if I don't have McCain's brain, and I am certain that I don't have Bush's brain, and, as far as I know, I don't have Hillary's brain, then I guess that I must have Obama's brain!"  That wiped the smirk off Doc's face.  I added, "I am, after all, the result of a mixed marriage."

"How so?"

"My father was a man, and my mother was a woman."

As Doc's left eyebrow launched into an infinite arch, I added, "It was a popular kind of arrangement back then, when I was born, but lately such marriages have begun falling out of fashion, as you may have noticed."

"Obama's brain?" Doc asked with the air of a man confirming an euthanasia request.  "Do you mean that you sometimes, even frequently, make factually accurate and even philosophically insightful statements in language so artless and impolitic, obtuse or just overly complex so as to offend or bewilder the very people who would most appreciate the expressed sentiment if it were expressed with delicate simplicity ― if it were, so to say, 'dumbed down' in a manner so as to conceal the condescension that 'dumbing down' naturally implies?"

"Precisely!" I exclaimed, relieved that Doc finally agreed with me about something.

And that is when Doc Potz gleefully informed me that the electromyography he had scheduled for me involved the insertion of numerous pins that would generate electric shocks of varying severity throughout my body over the course of 30 to 45 minutes.

"Something has to be done about the health care system in this country," I grumbled, moving toward the door.

"You're just another bitter person clinging to your prescription," Doc snorted as I left.