A Visit To The Doctor

A trip to the doctor’s is never high on my list of fun things to do. Especially during cold and flu season. So when my daughter was feeling poorly, and I realized she needed to go, I packed my bottle of Purell, took plenty of Vitamin C, put on our bio-hazard suits, and headed for the doctor’s.
We entered a full waiting room of variously diseased people. I searched about for the healthiest person to seat her near while I went to sign in. A rather healthy looking woman was sitting next to an empty seat, so, after apologizing to her, since after sitting next to my daughter, she would not be healthy much longer, I left my daughter drooping in the chair while I signed the list. I then returned and waited for her to be called.

Having neglected to bring a book or a magazine, we searched for something interesting to pass the time. The television in the corner was not playing something interesting like The Terminator or Die Hard, but playing Sponge Bob with no volume. The doctor must like shows for kids. I passed some time rubbing Purell on different parts of my body and parts of the furniture that I was touching, before growing restless. In an effort to keep both myself and my daughter occupied, I grabbed some pamphlets that were on a nearby table and we began to read.
What interesting reading! All the pamphlets spelled out in very simple terms a variety of diseases that a large percentage of the human population happened to be experiencing at that very moment.

One pamphlet pointed out all the symptoms of whooping cough. My daughter went down the list and discovered that the very serious cough I had a while back probably had been due to the serious and deadly bordetella pertussis virus. She went through symptom after symptom of how I had coughed all over people at work, at school, in line at the bank, and how I should have been hospitalized. I knew now that if that woman at church that had grumbled so nastily at me and bolted away when I coughed all over her purse had known I was so close to entering the light, she would probably have felt very bad and not snatched her purse away and scolded me by claiming I should have stayed home. What luck I survived. Must have been because I was coughing in church.

The next showed gruesome pictures of an oozing ear, captioned by the dangers of a lengthy bout of otitis media. My daughter rubbed her ear and said she had been having a sore ear for some time and thought this must be why she never hears when I tell her to pick up her socks. The poor thing. It made me regret getting so mad all the time. Dirty socks were nothing, I should have been caring for my sick daughter.

And then we read about deformational plagiocephaly. How horrible! And I had it. A malformed head. My head had never been round and my grandmother would massage it saying all good grandmothers could mold a baby’s head into a beautiful sphere. She was not successful. I still stand on my head tilting to the side. Thank goodness modern science now had a special helmet.
When the doctor finally called us in, we were both in a state. We told him of all our diseases and I asked him if it was too late for me to have a helmet. I thought one that said Harley Davidson on it would look very nice.

He kindly told me that my head was fine and beyond molding. And he questioned when was the last time I had stood on my head. It had been years, but one never knows when one might need to escape a crisis by standing on one’s head. And mine, I now knew, was malformed.

Thank goodness for doctors. He told me that I really had just had a bad cough and should probably carry a napkin next time I went to church. He also said the deadly, oozing ear was not actually deadly or oozing. Her hearing loss was probably more selective. He also examined her and decided she had a virus that would be gone in a few days. She was not even close to the light.

Sighing with relief, I wiped the worried sweat off my malformed brow and asked if we would both be fine. He said yes, we would. And no matter how worried I was about finding myself upside down, I still could not have the helmet.