Feel Your Balls Once a Month

One of the firm joys of gaining new employment, even if you hate it, is going to Occupational Medicine for your pre-employment,-oops-we-hired-you-already-but-nevermind-about-that physical examination.

"If you get Joe," my nurse educator warned, "he's going to say some asshole thing to you, so just be prepared. He says something obnoxious to everybody we send down to Occ. Med.-- it's so embarrassing."

"Hmpf," I eloquently replied, staring out the window, wondering silently if this was really my life.

"We sent a tech down there for a physical and he asked if she drank alcohol, and she said, 'No' and he laughed at her. 'Uh, you look like you drink to me,' he told her. He's a total asshole."

Even armed with the knowledge that I was most likely going to confront a world-class, four-star dickcheese at 2:00pm yesterday, I was nevertheless thrilled to get out of a locked mental ward on the company clock. Because I am obsessed with following the rules and never doing the wrong thing if I can avoid it, yesterday morning I asked my supervisor,

"So, I have my doctor's appointment at Occ. Med. at 2:00pm. Do I still get to take my hour lunch, or do I have to eat it during the time when I'm having the appointment done, like, driving to the appointment or back?"

She stared at me.

"Are you serious? Take your hour lunch. My God."

Yes, I'm serious. Though no one ever believes it.

I laughed to myself when I walked up to the building that says "Occ. Med." on the glass door. When I hear someone say "Occ. Med." I always think of some swarthy-assed, dark and thoroughly unshorn Middle Eastern man named "Achmed." Of course, I was the only vaguely Middle Eastern-looking man in this particular building. It was just me, the lumpy receptionist in dark blue scrubs with a Phillies emblem, and the doctor.

Well, the Physician's Assistant. Joe. A P. A. Joe, the P. A.

I'm usually not a snob about titles, but I kind of want my physical examinations done by an M.D. Does that make me an old fashioned tightass? Probably, but if a gloved and lubricated hand is going up that old fashioned tightass, I want it to be the gloved and lubricated hand of a medical doctor. And that's just the kind of patient I am, damnit.

I suppose I've been spoiled by the fact that I still have the privilege of visiting the same General Practitioner who gave me my first vaccine, a bowtie-wearing, corduroy-trousered, gizzard-necked gentleman who graduated medical school sixty-one years ago. When I look into this man's eyes, I know there is very little he has not seen out of those eyes in all these years-- from gaping wounds in the Korean War to my fever-ridden eldest sister on long-forgotten house-calls in the late 1960s. This is a man who, when my wife goes to see him in the colder months, picks up her coat and holds it for her as she slips her arms inside the sleeves.

My doctor. Mine.

After having my vitals taken and my vision checked by a nurse, I sat in the exam room for twenty-eight minutes, waiting for this P. A. to come in. He was in his late forties, and I was pleasantly surprised when the first words out of his mouth were an apology for making me wait so long. But, in the next breath, he lost points.

"Well," he said, "was it a long time? Shit, I don't even know. Um... what's your name?"

Oh, dear.

He asked where I was working. He could have looked at the paper right in front of him, with the name of my employer emblazoned all across the top of the page, but he didn't. I told him.

"Jesus," he said, "you a psychologist?"

"No, but the patients all think I'm a doctor. They call me, "Dr. G."

He laughed. Yeah, it's funny-- because nobody calls you doctor anything. They just call you "Joe." Because you're just "Joe."

He proceeded to tell me that he used to work at the facility where I now work.

"Don't turn your back on any of those sumbitches," he advised, "not even for a second. And memorize where every goddamn panic button is in that place."

"Okay," I said.

He did his physical exam, reporting that he heard no wheezing when listening to my lungs, which is a nice thing for a career asthmatic to hear. Then, he listened to my heart. He frowned.

"Did anybody ever tell you you have a heart murmur?"

"No," I said. He listened again. And then again.

"Well, I heard some skips the first time, and then I listened again, and it was perfect, and then, just for shits and giggles, I listened a third time, and didn't hear it again-- so, you know, I don't know what that means-- if no one's ever told you that you have skipped beats or a murmur or mitral valve prolapse. I don't know."

Oh, well that's good!

"I do have an R.B.B." I told him.

There was a moment's silence.

"What's that?"

There was another moment's silence.

"A Right Bundle Branch Block."

"Oh," he said, and then quickly changed the subject to me taking my pants off for a hernia examination. I undid my belt, unbuttoned my trousers, and unzipped my fly. Just when I had pulled my pants and underwear down to my knees, he said,

"Oh, shit-- I forgot to check your eyes and ears and throat. Jesus! I'm all screwed up here."

Ah. Well, this is awkward. You know, because I've got my pants halfway down and Captain Dickarson is at parade rest out in the open. But, sure, go shine a light in my eyes. No problem.

And that is what he did. He then moved down to my junk. The old turn-your-head-and-cough routine that we know so well from countless stand-up-and-cough routines. While he was eye-to-eye with my material, he said,

"In two extra seconds, I can see if you've got testicular cancer-- so why not, right?"

Wow. What a sweet talker-- how could I refuse?

So, he rolled my schnuts around and said he didn't feel anything. He stood up, pulled a BIC pen out of his shirt pocket and said, "I was looking for something about half the size of the end of this pen. Feel your balls once a month."

Um...

"See, if you were fifty-- I wouldn't have done that to you. But prime age for testicular cancer is 18-42 or something." He paused. "Wait-- I didn't even ask you hold old you are."

"You did actually-- I'm thirty. You wrote it down there on your paper."

"Oh, yeah! Well, great to meet you," he said. I smiled my traditional, pained half-smile, half-wince I give to people when meeting them has minutely yet irrevocably chipped away at my faith in humanity.

"Yes," I said, "likewise, Joe."

Red Velvet Medicine

Here's a smidgey-widge of advice--

(No, this isn't a Dear Apron column, and I'll be nice. This time...)

If you're hairy, and you see a red bulge on your leg: DO NOT SQUEEZE IT.

Do NOT.

Even if you give a little pressure at first and a very satisfying stream of mustard-like substance squirts out with zeal. Because this will only tempt you to press again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

And: again.

That, friends, was Sunday.

At around 2 o'clock on Monday afternoon, I went to the bathroom at work, undid my trousers, and looked at my leg. There was an ungodly lump on it that very closely resembled, in color and diameter, a red velvet cupcake. By mid-afternoon, it was so painful I could barely walk at all. That, plus the sinus infection that was kicking my ass, and the "don't tell me, tell your doctor" admonition from my wife, prompted me to pick up the phone and call my doctor, who works basically 'round the clock.

Think I'm being cute?

Monday 8:30am-4:00pm, 7:00pm-9:00pm

Tuesday 8:30am-12:00pm, 4:00-10:00pm

Wednesday8:30am-4:00pm, 7:00pm-9:00pm

Thursday 10:00am-4:00pm, 7:00pm-9:00pm

Friday 8:30am-2:00pm

Saturday 8:00am-12:00pm

Oh, and did I mention that Wilbur Langer, M. D. is around 85?

That's just a guess, of course. He graduated from med school in 1949, and he used to answer my great-grandmother's house-calls. Even though he is the very model of a WASPY medical doctor, that pretty, old-fashioned, married Jewish lady used to make sure her makeup was beautifully applied in preparation for his sick calls.

In that house, in those days, a visit from the dashing Dr. Langer was a big deal.

Still impossibly thin (like his Monday night patient), he is now liver-spotted and turkey-necked and his hair, whatever color it was in the house-call days is now a downy white, parted almost down by his right earlobe. His shirt collars and cuffs are frayed and his trousers-- typically red or green corduroy, are worn at the knee and hang awkwardly around his bony hips. The only thing about his wardrobe that ever looks "new" are his ties-- always bowties, tautly tied, typically emblazoned with some critter or other. On Monday night it was a peppermint green bowtie with rows of diagonally-arranged penguins.

"Good morning," Dr. Langer said to me, because it was 7:15pm and he's cute. "I like your tie," he said.

I looked down, unsure even of which tie I was wearing. Ah. Thing 1 and Thing 2 tooling around in red, Seussian race cars. I smiled at him and his penguins.

"I like yours, too."

"Come on back," he said.

As I got up laboriously from the chair, pain shooting down my right leg, he watched me, but, instead of launching right into business in that empty waiting room, even the secretaries long gone for the night, he said,

"I noticed you appreciating the artwork on the walls."

He was right-- I had. One painting in particular of a small lake with tall, skinny trees reflecting in the water. They kind of looked like him, actually. A couple other nature scapes, one done in a sort of broad-dabbed pointillism. One an abstractly-colored and proportion homage to the rolling hills of America.

As I hobbled in front of him down the hallway I said, "You know, I forget how much I like looking at art until I'm not in a museum."

He laughed.

I told him about my sinus infection first, describing the pain in my left cheekbone, my congestion, my green "schmull." I wonder if he first heard that Yiddishkite from my great-grandmother. She was fond of words like "schmull" before we put her in a home and she refused to speak ever again.

"And how long has this been going on for?" he asked.

"About two days," I said. I talked to him about how he'd just had me on Amoxicillin before Christmas, but it didn't seem to do the job, because then I got sick again with the sinus infection.

"And how long has this been going on for?" he asked again.

Oh, Jesus, I thought. This is it. This is the beginning of the end of my doctor, my doctor who gave me my first immunization, and just about every single one thereafter.

He started writing out a prescription for Cipro.

"Anything else I can do for you today, sir?"

"Well," I said, "I did something very, very stupid yesterday." I told him what happened and he asked me to pull down my pants.

I'm always doing that for Dr. Langer. No doubt he's sick of it by now, because I certainly am, but he doesn't let it show, because he's pretty much Jesus in a white coat. Instead of a crown of thorns, he's got one of those lamps on a thick band of elastic. I pull down my pants in front of him not because I have a weird, old man fetish, but because I'm always convinced I have penile cancer or herpes or any number of those impossible to spell sexually transmitted diseases. I inspect every dot, ever discoloration, every... everything, especially down there. Because I have a guilty conscience. Because I am crazy.

In 2004, I asked him to give me an HIV test.

"Why?" he asked.

"Because I have warts on my toes, and I read that people who get warts sometimes have compromised immune systems."

"But sometimes they don't," he said, in a failing attempt at reasoning with me.

"Right, and, last month, I got thrush. I read that people who have AIDS get thrush."

"You were on an antibiotic that was too strong, that's why you got thrush."

"Please?" I asked.

"I shouldn't be doing this," he said, rolling up my sleeve and prepping my upper arm with a swab. "There is no valid, medical reason for me to give you an HIV test, but I'm doing this because I know it's the only way to stop you from worrying."

And he was right. But, every time I get sick and don't heal completely within 3 days, I still think about it.

When I pulled down my trousers for Dr. Langer tonight, his eyes widened at the sight of the massive, enflamed, warm, round, red boulder that took up half my leg.

"Oh, my. Whoa! You really did a number on yourself there."

"I know. I'm sorry," I said, as despondent as if I were back in 7th grade, presenting dreadful math tests to my father for his signature.

Continuing the theme of me feeling like a child, he blopped some triple antibiotic ointment on it with a cotton swab and said,

"Don't do that. Ever. Again."

But then he smiled and rubbed my shoulder. And I wanted to cry right there on his examination table. I can never help wondering, every time I sit on that table, if this time will be the last time. It's actually one of my less irrational irrational thoughts, being as Dr. Langer is probably not immortal and he is definitely getting up there. He has seen my family through so much. So many families through so much pain and joy and despair. This is what family medicine is. But, the number of bizarre, obsessive, mostly ficticious ailments that I have presented this poor man with over the course of our 29-year-long association just shames the hell out of me, though I have no doubt that my mania accounts for only a small fraction of the crazy shit he's seen in his last half-century of practicing the art of doctoring.

"Thank you for helping me," I said to him, looking into his watery, gray-green eyes so he'd know I didn't just mean the ointment and the Cipro.

"That's why I'm here," he said, smiling. Always smiling. "Fortunately, I still like doing what I do."

I buckled my belt and smoothed my Dr. Seuss tie.

"I'm very glad to hear it."