You are only young once, and if you work it right, once is enough. – Joe E. Lewis
Just back from the doctors’. New doctors.
When I was a kid, I remember the grownups talking. “I have a new doctor. He’s Jewish.” His name was Dr. Lipschitz, so even a dumb country boy could figure that out. But there was a certain cache to having a Hebrew as your physician. Basically, you could always count on a Jew. Sharp.
Patel and Patel. Patel and Patel. I just like saying it. Dermatologists. And I thought to myself, we have come so far as a nation. Send me to a skin whisperer with an Indian surname and I think to myself, hell, yeah. Now we’re talking.
First thing I notice, the office crew looks like Drs. Patel decided, what the heck, we’ll hire the entire varsity cheerleading squad. Worse yet, they seem sincere. Chipper.
I hate chipper.
Have to confess, I come from a time where my older teenage aunt advised me to mix iodine and baby oil and lay in the sun for hours, turning over regularly like a 7-11 wiener. Later at seven thousand feet above sea level, scantily clad, I ran one hundred miles weekly in sunny scorchingly thin air. My spotted skin looks like a sketchy Dalmatian.
It was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow – I call him Hank – who said, over a bottle or two doubtlessly of sudsy beverage:
To be seventy years old is like climbing the Alps. You reach a snow-crowned summit, and see behind you the deep valley stretching miles and miles away, and before you other summits higher and whiter, which you may have strength to climb, or may not. Then you sit down and meditate and wonder which it will be.
Loni and one of the Patels checked me everywhere. Up and down, front and back. I was wearing my Avengers undershorts with codpiece. Loni appeared impressed. Seemed to have trouble keeping up on her iPad as one of the Patels rattled off the location of various disturbing spots on my flesh, one after another. Her little computer was practically smoking when the doc called it quits.
All we have to do now is wait for the government and the insurance company and my primary to decide who’s gonna burn this and who gets to freeze that.
“What about this spot?” I asked, pointing at my left calf. On my co-favorite leg in the world.
John Bunyan is alleged to have said, “I will run when I can, walk when I cannot run, creep when I cannot walk.” We had already checked my two favorite legs. Both had already passed.
I will limp if I have to. I will crawl when I can no longer creep.
“Didn’t see that.” Patel’s poker face was good but ineffective as he went for the needle and scalpel.
Loni acted like the sample was a piece of graphite from Chernobyl. “We’ll call you in a week or so with the results. Call us, if you don’t hear anything in two weeks.” Doesn’t sound serious.
Two days later, I get a message on my voicemail. Call Patel and Patel, I’m told.
I called, I got an answering machine, I left a message, they didn’t call back. I am thinking I’ll try again next week. My wife was thinking, you will call again right now.
It’s not good. But it’s not so bad we can’t wait until after our next trip before the surgery. Gave me two choices, one more intrusive than the other. I took the harder option. My wife made me.
Hoping for painkillers at least. If you don’t enjoy getting old, I think you are doing it wrong.
“Life was a funny thing that happened to me on the way to the grave,” Quentin Crisp said. Would be too sad and too depressing to look back and not be somewhat amused.
Bottom line, I’m done waiting. Nothing to worry about.
Yet.
This time.
Later that same day, the puppy and I headed out for our evening cruise. Wait until then cause we have to. Eighty degrees when you wake up, eighty degrees when you go to bed, hot inbetween. Workout’s in the morning and we bust ass for an hour. It’s hard. Ragnar doesn’t like the heat any more than I do, so our second effort is a half hour stroll after the sun’s gone down. It’s easy.
Bump into a neighbor and his new dog. Part Cairn, part Yorkshire, all feisty. A rescue.
“What’s new?,” he asks. So, I give him an earful. Can’t talk about another accusation of sexual assault against Trump. Not in this hood. So, skin cancer, surgery. Make it sound worse than it is. I hope.
“I know just what you mean,” neighbor consoles. He points to a deep divot on the bridge of his nose. Close to his brain. “They didn’t get it all,” he tells me, “so they’re gonna go back in, dig out some more. Taking a tear duct this time.”
About right then, I think I stopped listening but I could still hear him. Something about a faraway town where he’ll have a new tear duct installed.
Swear I felt a chill.
“You win!,” I told him. “Good luck and God bless you.”
I waved a so-long and he took another drag on his cigarette.