A Good NIght’s Sleep: Part 4

Back to the pursuit of a good night’s sleep.  Carol is doing well,

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So it’s about 900 and the open slot to see the pulmonary guy for my problem breathing in air and burping and farting and to get a prescription for a new autocpap machine is at 10.  I am running a bit behind because the guy says for me to come in 15 minutes early to do the paperwork.  Being the hyper punctual guy I am I get in the car and bomb down the freeway only to find the exit for the doctor is closed for repair and the sign that told me that was located just past the last turn I could take before the closed street.  So I drive by the closed street and go to the next turn off and turn round to get back on the freeway to get to the street and what do you know, but it’s closed too. And then I can’t find a spot in the parking lot, but I do find one on the street, and finally get there at 5 till 10 to do the paperwork.

And of course, I am such an idiot, I am still sitting on my ass there in the waiting room at 1020 when Carol, who is driving through town on the way to LA to attend a convention, comes in to sit and wait with me.  Now, I want to make it perfectly clear.  I am not some big baby who needs his wife to come with him to the doctor.  Sure doctors make me like incredibly anxious and my blood pressure is always elevated consequently.

When years ago Carol first started asking me if I wanted her to go to the doctor with me I would resolutely say no and I would go ALL BY MYSELF.  But then after the doctor visit she would want to know what the doctor had said and half the time I couldn’t remember what he or she said exactly and I would forget to ask some question she suggested I make sure to ask, or I would just be pissed off and not want to talk about it all.  So she stopped asking if I wanted her to come with me and asked instead if she could come with me because that was the only way she was going to get an accurate view of what the doctor said and make sure I asked the questions that needed to be asked.

So I said, OK, she could come along since it seemed she didn’t seem to think I was a Big Baby but simply wanted to come along for efficiency of communication and accuracy of report.  And now I like to have her come along with me if she can because that gives me somebody to talk to while I wait in the big waiting room and later in the little waiting room with that table thing you lie on.  So I hope I have made it clear that I am not a Big Baby or anything like that…just terribly anxious and scared to death of doctors.

Especially pulmonary doctors, because each time I see one of those I get to thinking they will look down my throat or something and say my but that’s a mighty fine cancer you have growing there from those 40 years of smoking that you have so irresponsibly done.  So not only am I scared about the idea they may find cancer but I have to deal with the immense guilt I feel—every damn day—at the fact that I have smoked for forty years and have in all likelihood, as a consequences, consigned to myself to an early grave preceded by the slow torture of emphysema because I am a hyper rational guy and actually believe what the doctors say about smoking killing a person.

So given all the inward turmoil I go through just to get to a pulmonary doctor, I must have been feeling pretty fed up with all the burping and farting to agree so readily to zoom down there to fill in for the cancellation.

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