September 14, 2026
A few years ago, I was having some weird tingling feelings in my legs, and it was leading to a few painful issues shooting down my legs. The fact that I was pushing sixty and had a job where I was standing most of a 12-hour night shift and then religiously hitting the gym every morning after work might have had something to do with the issue. However, being the constant hypochondriac I screeched out to my doctor that I was under the belief that I could drop dead at any given second. So to appease my concern or ditch me off to another doctor, my general practice doctor sent me to the local neurologist. The neurologist was some guy who was even older than me. The problem with that is the fact that he’s probably suffering from every issue I have times three, and he sees all of these terrible health concerns as just a part of getting old. The cool thing about the guy though, was that he was pretty free in dishing out prescriptions. I think he would have written me out a prescription for heroin if I had brought up a concern.
Sometimes we’d talk about everything but my health, but he always called me his friend which I thought was a nice touch. He’s semi-retired now, so now I have a nurse practitioner who sees me for my appointments. She’s only a few months older than I am so we bond over a love for classic rock. This last week I had my six-month checkup, and as the case is for most of my specialist doctor appointments, when I entered the waiting room, I looked to be the healthiest person there, and that includes the women who are sitting at the check-in windows. Indeed, there was no one in the waiting room that I would ask to join me for the senior marathon run. I was actually wondering how some of them even made it down the hallway to the office.
For this visit my blood pressure was amazing, but I was a bit concerned regarding the fact that I can feel my pulse in my upper lip at times. My health care expert told me that sometimes she could feel her pulse in her fingers. Okay, we were finding more common ground, but such did little good to answer my question. So we moved on to other things. I had retired since I had last seen her, and she wanted to know how that was working for me. I said I wasn’t really missing the work life, but I probably could have found a job similar to my last one if I had laid forth a little effort. However, my financial planners tell me that I was good not to work, and I felt a little greedy taking a job when there were folks out there who really needed a paycheck. Other than the longing for a purpose in life or a need to get out of bed every morning, I was good with not working.
Then the topic turned to my adjustment from working a compressed night shift work schedule of half the week on and half the week off to a life of leisure where my biggest hardship is trying to decide what creamer I want to add to my coffee. Since she was the medical person who had prescribed my sleeping pills, she suggested that I might want to cut back on the sleepy meds considering I’m back to living a normal sleep schedule. I told her that I was still taking two or three of the pills a day while washing them down with NyQuil or the occasional hot cup of Theraflu or both. As she looked at me, I could nearly hear her thoughts, “Dude, why don’t you just swig down a bottle of Vodka while you’re at it.” She then asked me if I ever had any kind of strange dreams due to my medication. Seriously? Does anyone have dreams that aren’t strange? Dorthy had a dream that involved a talking lion and scarecrow with flying monkey’s buzzing around her and no one questioned her medication. Besides, I told her that my dreams were usually the highlight of my day. In all reality, I have way more fun while I’m asleep than I do when I’m awake. This led to her asking about my family’s history of mental illness.
We chatted a bit about dementia, and my family does have its healthy share of that dreaded illness along with diabetes, cancer, heart problems…well, after a little thought I reckon, I should start living every day like it’s my last because you never know. I told her that I had even considered doubling my exercize routine. With that thought she deemed me healthy enough to schedule my appointments for every year instead of every six months. I hate it when my social life gets disruptive this way.
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