My relationship with the medical community has always been rather tenuous. As a young boy I dreaded going to the doctor’s office with that terrible sense of foreboding that was something greater than paralyzing. I say it was greater because I nearly had to be put in a straitjacket to keep me from escaping. Even at the tender age of three or four, it took several nurses and a parent to hold me down so that the doctor could persecute me with one of his malicious syringes before offering me a lollipop.

I wanted to tell him to keep the stupid lollipop, except for the purple ones because I really liked those. Well, no. In fact, I’d have rather he had pulled a purple lollipop from its wrapper and choked on it if it meant he wouldn’t shove that needle in me again. “Don’t tense your muscles,” he would plead, but what sentient being isn’t going to tense up when something that appears to be the size of an oil rig is about to be jammed into his leg? Never mind. I didn’t know what a sentient being was at that age anyhow, and sure I wasn’t going to encounter any samples of the species within the confines of that doctor’s torture chambers.

Got a cold? Jam a needle in the left leg. Nasty cough? Excavate the right one. Fever? Roto-rooter the left one again. Asthma? Flu? Ingrown toenail? Cussed out a teacher? Harpoon a tricep! Ear infection? Lacerate an eardrum with a knitting needle! Oh yes, I remember that experience. Forget water boarding. Need intel from a Radical Islamic Weird Beard? Turn an ear doctor loose on him and he’ll be singing like Ethel Merman on magic mushrooms.  And don’t forget the lollipop.

Then there was the time — oh, I must have been 15 or 16 — when I had an exquisitely abscessed molar. Try as he might, the kindly dentist couldn’t numb the thing. You could level a pachyderm with the amount of Novocain he shot to that tooth, and still the nerve kept throbbing merrily along. Finally, he had to extract it with the nerve very much alive. It is one thing to hear and sense the pressure, the cracking and popping when a deadened tooth is dragged out, quite another when the tooth is not numbed. By the time he was done, the dentist and I both were in tears.

Six months later, my little sister called that same dentist’s office and made appointments for both her and I to get a check-up. I waited until she hung up, and then I called the office back myself and cancelled my appointment. I had already survived one visit. They weren’t going to get a second crack at me.

My dealings with physicians were rather limited from that long ago time until about four years ago when I had to be hospitalized four times within a span of nine months due to kidney stones. I was driving cross country in an 18-wheeler at the time and so had the chance to visit hospitals in Michigan, Texas, Florida, and Maryland. The final episode, in Maryland, required surgery that likely saved my life. But the surgeon was a good man, and I’m sure he meant well just the same.

I’ve been getting by well enough since then, but had a few issues that wouldn’t go away on their own and so I finally relented and scheduled my first physical examination in 14 years just a few weeks ago. I’ve not been on good terms with my digestive system in some time, so I told the doc that we needed to address that. He answered me, but I couldn’t tell exactly what he was saying, which reminded me that I needed to get my hearing checked as well. Then I remembered that I was going to forget most of what the doctor was telling me anyway, and so he said I would see a neurologist too.

Of course no doctor worth his salt will let you out of the office without trying out one of his needles. It was a blood test, he said, and they only needed one barrel’s worth. The needle lady was pleasant enough and she took only enough for a single deposit at the First National Bank of Transylvania. I was dually poked and prodded by the doctor, and made to take deep breaths, cough, stand up, lie down, sit up, roll over, play dead, and take any other commands anyone could think up. Good health is a lot like playing Simon Says.

A week later I went to the ear doctor. You see, I could hear just fine in my left ear, but the right one wasn’t up to specs. The advantage to this was that on those evenings when I have to turn in early, I can put my good hear to the pillow and hear next to nothing through the bad ear, insuring a pleasant rest no matter what else happens in the house. The disadvantage came when I was awake and people had to keep repeating themselves. After a quick examination, the doctor determined that my right ear contained a great deal of wax which had impacted and clogged up the proceedings.

Next, I was told to lie down on a table while the doctor fired up a 747 jet engine which had a hose and a little attachment he would use to pull the contents of my head out of my right ear, the idea being that when the jawbone came out it would take the wax along with it. If anything remained inside my head when he was finished, it wasn’t his fault.

Presently, it seemed my skull might collapse from the suction, which caused me to flinched a little. This did not please the doctor, who shut down the jet turbine and rather impatiently explained, “Every time you move, it takes six times longer to get this done, which makes it six times more unpleasant for you.” They said the same thing at the Salem Witch Trials of course, and we know what good times were had back then. “Let it go,” I told myself — he has a job to do.

Before he was done, that doctor hauled out a sizable amount of brain tissue through my right ear canal along with enough wax to fill a basilica with candles, two cheekbones, three quarters of an eye socket, and a 1957 Chevy, rendering that ear just as capable as its twin. Here, I repeat and emphasize again —  if you need information from an enemy combatant or a politician, or if you just want to know where your teenager was after curfew last night, say no more about enhanced interrogation or extended holidays at Guantanamo Bay. Just strap ‘em down on a gurney and let an ear doctor ply his trade for a moment or two, and you’ll have a spanking new confession before you’ve had time to pour yourself a drink.

My new and improved hearing easily picked up the sound of my phone ringing a few days later. It was something called a G.I. doctor.  A “G.I.” doctor, for those who don’t know, is a member of the Gastro Industrial Complex, and it is they who administer colonoscopies. I’d not had one of those before, and I wasn’t especially keen to start now, but it’s one of those things you ignore at your own peril. Besides, my sister said that these doctors tend to get to the bottom of things, so the appointment was made.

Friends and relations had told me that the actual procedure isn’t so bad, but rather, it’s the preparation the night before that will have you yearning for the gallows. They were right. And speaking of my little sister, when she was a young child and was given a spoonful of cough medicine for the first time, I remember her little face wrinkled up in utter disgust and she announced that the medicine tasted like a “dead bird.” It struck me as a peculiar phrase back then, and I never did understand it. At least not until I had to consume a quart of that concoction the Gastro Industrial Doctor served up.

That mess was, without doubt, the worst and vilest tasting brew the human imagination is capable of conjuring. It was like drinking a slaughterhouse. The hideous potion is then followed with half a gallon or so of water, and presently business sets in. I was occupied for the remainder of the evening. I couldn’t have been more thoroughly cleaned out if I had guzzled Drano, and toward the end of the night I even began shivering a bit from the chills that had set in. I felt like a locomotive had run through me.

We were up before sunrise the next morning, and made our way to the little surgery center where the nurses and staff were as gracious and pleasant as they were knowledgeable and helpful. Soon I was wheeled back to a room where about half a dozen people, most wearing little masks, greeted me and made me comfortable. When I mentioned that I was cold, a sumptuous and warm blanket was placed over me, it’s delicious warmth soon followed by the anesthesia running through the I.V. “You’ll be asleep in about 15 seconds,” the wonderful anesthesia nurse said. “Oh, it won’t take that long,” I said, my eyes trying to focus on the clock which kept sliding down the wall. “Did you know,” I mumbled, “that…” And that’s all I remember.

It seemed only a moment later that I heard, “Sweetie, are you waking up?” My beautiful wife was sitting next to my bed in the recovery area. I managed to open my eyes and it seemed I was seeing two of everything. Shelley told me that the doctor had already been in twice to go over the results of the procedure with me, but I wouldn’t wake up. Evidently, he tried to shake me and did everything but use my noggin as a bowling ball, and still I slept like a graven image. This isn’t surprising, since I can hold my whiskey respectably, but if you give me a baby aspirin I’ll be in La-La Land in no time. A few moments later, I woke up enough to move about and Shelley drove me to a nearby restaurant, where her mom met us for breakfast before I went home to rest for the remainder of the day.

Through all the tests that have been administered thus far, I’ve learned that I am pre-diabetic, have “abnormally high” cholesterol, have good hearing (though when there is background noise I remain unable to pull one person’s voice out of the ambient sound), and I’m scheduled for another colonoscopy in five years. The neurologist isn’t done with me yet, as we do some testing and try to sort through some issues in light of my Dad’s history of Alzheimer’s and an especially unpleasant event several years ago that left me in tremendous pain and unable to speak for a spell. But this too shall be sorted out.

Meanwhile, I’m reminded of Mark Twain’s observation that, “The only way to keep your good health is to eat what you don’t want, drink what you don’t like, and do what you’d rather not.” There’s more than a grain of truth there, which is why we laugh when we read it. But there is much left to see and do, and too many smiles to enjoy with a wonderful family to head for the exits anytime soon. I’ll behave and do what the doctors order, which should be enough to confound the medical profession and entertain friends and family for the foreseeable future.