Doctor, there's something wrong with me
My health is not all that it used to be

Thursday, 8:45am

Dreams of strange IM conversations, scientifically enhanced killers, and needing to go to the bathroom waft away like smoke as an actual need to go to the bathroom and a tiny spark of dread are suppressed.

I can’t go to the bathroom…not till 9:45.

I drive through traffic ridden freeways and pull up to the chipped and peeling brown wooden walls of a building I wish I had never seen. I walk into room 101 and up to the receptionist’s desk.

Are you…Mister Paige?

Yes.

You don’t need to sign in, just have a seat.

I am the only one in the room under 70 and they all eye me as if I am invading their inner sanctum. Old people can’t go to dance clubs and young people can’t go to urogynecological offices. An old Jewish couple stand in the middle of the room…well, the woman stands, the man is in a wheelchair. She talks to the receptionist…

If you don’t mind I’ll leave him here instead of lugging him around. He’s not needed right now.

I glance at the magazine titles that surround me: Women’s Health, Golf Living, Better Homes and Gardens, and the occasional Guide to Understanding Medicare. I can’t bear to feign interest in any of them as I redirect my focus to random conversations. The nurse hangs up the phone and turns to another nurse…

Swollen testicles. Very painful. He wants to know if we can fit him in today.

The nurse calls my name…she’s new. Not the same 70-year-old woman who has been the nurse for my last 12 or so visits. She is confused when I don’t listen to her instructions and already know what to do. After the urine sample I sit in a room on the edge of a paper-covered bed with an oversized paper towel as my only covering from the waist down. The entire wall in front of me is covered in one of those huge pictures of a beautiful outdoor scene. So if I use my imagination I am simply sitting naked from the waist down out by a nice pond in Tennessee…surrounded by medical equipment, since what’s a pond without IVs, boxes of rubber gloves, and sterile swabs?

Dr. K walks in and pats me on the back.

How’s it goin’ buddy? Everything working all right?

I go through the motions as Dr. K and the new nurse set up. Soon I’m lying on the bed sans my oversized paper towel that I really, at this moment, want back. The new nurse, who is about my age, looks embarrassed, blushes, and busies herself with straightening already straightened equipment and won’t even look in my direction.

Pain.

I’m sitting up again as Dr. K explains my current condition…

You’re ok, but I definitely don’t want you being catheterized. All it would take is a nurse having a bad day with a big, mean catheter and lack of care over her actions and it would catch the false passage and there would be pain and bleeding everywhere and…yeah. I don’t know why anyone would want to catheterize you, but ya never know!

He hands me an alcohol swab and leaves me to clean up and get dressed. I walk out to the desk and the receptionist looks at my charts.

OH! You don’t have to come back for a year! I bet you’re excited!

She’s used to telling me she’ll see me in a few months. I nod to show my excitement, take an antibiotic, down a shot of water, and walk out the door with a slight hobble to my step.