Death and sarcasm on a Sunday afternoon

By Patrick Reetz

I’m not sick. Really, I’m not. Just because I was curled in the fetal position on my couch last Sunday writhing in pain and calling family members to bid them farewell as I was sure I was on my deathbed (deathcouch?) does not necessarily mean I’m sick.

I’m not in denial either. Really, I’m not.

So it came as a shock to realize I had admitted defeat and driven myself to the urgent care center that afternoon, much to the disappointment of my vast and mighty ego. Oh, doctor!

I found myself filling out the requisite forms that asked me who I was a guardian for. Now, you see, I have some sort of mental condition that makes me fill out forms with a sense of humor, cynicism and sarcasm only I can enjoy.

Even though I worried my heart may stop beating at any moment while filling out those forms, I continued on with my constant need to amuse myself by jotting down some creative replies. My responses were: “Liquid Roadkill—my guitar;” “A large collection of blues, rock and early ‘90s alternative CDs—because Buddha knows that what’s on the radio right now couldn’t pass for real alternative;” and “My recently stolen car stereo—if found, please return (does this make me a bad guardian?)”

I returned the forms to the cute nurse at the desk and produced my insurance “card.” Now, I remember the good days when I was under my parents’ real insurance and I had an actual plastic card.

But these are the poor college days with poor student insurance, and the look I got from the cute nurse at the desk when I handed my paper card that read “MEGA student insurance” on it basically said to me “Yo, Mega Man. You’re not fooling anyone with this fake card.” Luckily for me, she was nice in addition to being cute, and decided to let her billing department handle it for me.

She took me into a room to take my vitals and history of my current complaint. I’m sure I impressed her with my vast medical terminology and contemplated writing down my phone number on a tongue depressor. However, as she was taking my blood pressure, she mumbled to herself “damn.” Let me tell you—and as someone in a health-care profession graduate program, I do know these things—this is never a good sign.

“ What is it?” I asked. “Oh, 160 over 120.” Now, 140/90 is already too high. But 160/120 means your heart is unhappy with its current position in the universe and is actually trying to jump into your skull. The cute nurse decided that she didn’t know how to take blood pressure and decided to let the doctor take it.

I waited a surprisingly small amount of time, and in walked the doctor. Now, mind you, at that point I was still sure I was dying. Yes, I did once swear that I wouldn’t be one of those students who takes a pathology class and decides he has eight different types of cancer, nine heart diseases and a small plethora of other ailments, but it turns out I’m more of a hypochondriac than I thought. Consequently, my first words when he came in through the door were: “Doc, my heart is going to stop beating any second now!”

Lucky for me, he must have seen a few neurotic students stressing out on a Sunday before their neuroanatomy exam in his many years of practice. He quickly determined that it was simply indigestion and stress and that my blood pressure was only 135/85. As I sat there with my eyes bulging out of my head and my hand taking my pulse to make sure I didn’t have an irregular heart beat, he asked, “Would it make you feel better if I did an EKG?”

I thought about it for a few seconds. In my head, it went something like this: “That’s lame dude. You know it’s just your stomach. But if he did an EKG, you could get that cute nurse back in here putting electrodes all over your body and you’d have a cool paper with squiggly lines all over it to go home and play ER with. Yeah! Do it!” I agreed.

Ten minutes later, the doctor came back in with the results and said, “I’m sorry to tell you this, but you’ve only got 80 or 90 years to live. Now get out of my clinic.”

Thank Buddha for modern medicine.

— This columnist can be reached at collegian@csufresno.edu