The Rockettes Meet George Blanda

I had a Two-fer Tuesday medically, seeing both my cardiologist in the morning and then later in the day meeting my new primary care physician (I have no idea what happened to my previous one; she left the practice at some point since my last annual physical and nobody bothered to tell me about it until very recently and when it was too late to do a lot more about it than grumble online).

I remain quite the challenge for my cardiologist as if I were a Rube Goldberg contraption. I have so many things wrong from a lifetime of indifference and over-indulgence (and a healthy dollop of just plain old bad luck) that when one of my physicians (and I have a raft of them: endocrinologist, nephrologist, urologist, rheumatologist, radiologist, in addition to the cardiologist mentioned above and primary care physician) tweaks or changes a medication, the ripples in the pond cause two others to scramble to compensate. 

I watch all of this go on around me like it was happening to someone else someplace else because so far, the cost of leaving still outweighs the cost of living, for which I remain perversely grateful.

I was in the primary care physician's office when one of the practice's nurses, with a pink floral print blouse over visible-from-space pink scrubs (with pink rubber-soled shoes), strawberry blond hair, and my sister Kara's skin (Kara can almost get a sunburn from a fluorescent light), came down the corridor in search of 'Loretta.'

To be clear, this was not the Loretta who "thought she was a cleaner but she was a frying pan" but, rather, a woman of advanced years who was a walking illustration of the word 'frail'.

From the way she walked towards the nurse, I realized Loretta had every intention of remaining exactly as she was, unless or until she improved. No retreat, No surrender looked like her mantra. As the nurse approached, as so often happens in doctor's offices, she asked her "How are you feeling?" not in a diagnostic spirit so much as making conversation between human beings. 

Loretta studied the young woman for no more than two beats, and offered, responding for all of us at some point in our lives, "I'm still kickin', just not as high."
Preach, sister!
-bill kenny