October 15, 2026
Regardless of your age or health, EVERYONE should get a six-month checkup, or at least visit their favorite primary care doctor at least once a year. My wife Margaret set me up with my current primary care doctor back when we first got married. Apparently, the guy was her doctor, but she hasn’t seen him since I’ve known her. In fact, I once mentioned my wife’s name to my doctor, and he had no idea who I was talking about. I’m afraid my wife and I have different views in regards to keeping up with our health. Even though we both had great health insurance through our employer, Margaret has ironically avoided doctors like the plague. Back when we were first married her excuse for not going in for checkups was simply, “He’ll just tell me to quit smoking.” Well, she did quit smoking back in 2009, so I guess her new excuse is, “He’ll just tell me to exercize.” I guess her attitude falls within the simple rule of pick your favorite excuse and stick with it! As far as medical checkups, Margaret has always used the old cliché, “No news is good news.” I’ve often countered such by telling her that I’m going to chisel such words of wisdom onto her tombstone.
As for my own six-month checkups, I usually start preparing a few weeks in advance. This means cut most of the greasy, gooey goodness out of my diet and work to maintain my magical weight of 205 pounds. My doctor once told me that the ideal weight for my 6’2” height was 195, but I’ve seen some charts that told me I should weigh around 160. Seriously? My biggest concern regarding these appointments usually revolves around sucking down enough water where I won’t be stuck in the clinic’s restroom for an hour trying to produce a sample. Yea, that’s happened before.
Strangely enough, for this appointment I weighed in ten pounds less at the doctor’s office than I did on my own bathroom scales. Okay, that was weird, but at least my blood pressure was normal. Indeed, there’s nothing like a two mile walk before a doctor’s appointment to help lower the blood pressure. A couple of years ago, I had an appointment after I had spent several hours push mowing my lawn. My blood pressure was so low that afternoon that I’m pretty sure I should have been dead, but my doctor said I was fine. “The lower the better,” he stated. Well, he’s the one with all the diplomas hanging on his wall, so I’ll take his word for it.
Because this is a primary care doctor’s office and not one of my specialists, I can actually wander into the waiting room without getting the feeling that I’m the only patient that looks healthy enough where I might live to see Christmas. What I do find interesting is that a lot of the physicians at this clinic have their family portraits lining the hallways, and most of these doctors don’t just have a family, they have a tribe. I asked one of the nurses if all the doctors had families that ranged from six to ten kids. “They’re doctors,” the nurse answered. “They’re the only people who can afford such huge families.” Okay, point taken. My own doctor has six kids himself, four of which are daughters. Although they’re all grown with families of their own now, his examining room is full of photos of his family at various ages. So before the doc comes in, I’m left in the examining room and told to strip down to nothing but a hospital gown while leaving the back open. Of course, I’m doing all of this as photos of my doctor’s four daughters in their teenage years are all staring at me. Am I the only one who finds this creepy?
Usually when I go in for my six months checkup, I have a regular laundry list of aches, pains, aliments, and just general medical paranoia that I’m convinced are all fatal. Although my doctor probably sees me as one of his healthier 62-year-old patients, I’m usually spending all my appointment time trying to convince him that I probably only have a few months to live! In fact, I’ve literally chased him down the hallway dishing out all the self-diagnose sicknesses that I’m convinced will put me in the grave in a matter of weeks! Although he’s referred me to a neurologist, cardiologist, and dermatologist in the past, I fear that someday he’s going to refer me to a good psychiatrist.
As all men of a certain age know, the doctor checkups get a bit more personal the older you get. When you see your doctor pull on a pair of gloves, he’s not doing so to make a fashion statement, and when I hear the order to roll on my side, I realize that things are about to get personal! And the fondling doesn’t just stop with that violation. Men of all ages know what’s about to happen when the doctor tells you to cough. He’s certainly not checking out your lung capacity. It’s these times when I kind of wish my 65-year-old male doctor was some hot 26-year-old female doctor. The doctorate in medicine wouldn’t really be all that important in such a case. She could be a librarian for all I care.
My doctor was happy that I had already gotten my flu shot for the year and before I knew it, I was getting stuck in the arm with a pneumonia shot. I didn’t even know there was such a thing. Since I got my two Covid vaccinations back in 2020 when such was the fashionable thing to do, I asked him about that third Covid vaccination that I often hear about. He didn’t recommend it, and even told me that he was beginning to see some ill effects in some of his patients that might have resulted from the first two vaccines. Oh great. Now I’ve got to worry about that. I’ve been having weird tick and twinges ever since I learned of such. Oh well, I got a dose of Covid even with the double dose of vaccinations. Not to be outdone, my doctor informed me that he had caught the famous plague at least a dozen times. Occupational hazard I’m guessing. As we discussed vacations and family and everything non-medical, I asked my doctor how much longer he was planning to keep up his practice, considering he had hit the big 65-year milestone this year. He claimed that he loved his job and had every intention of working until he was 70 years old! That seems to be the magic number for everyone’s retirement these days. So is 70 the new 65? Wait, I retired at 62, so what’ that say about me? Oh well, I suppose being a doctor doesn’t require a lot of heavy lifting and back breaking work. All he has to do is come into a room, look me over, feel me up a bit, and send me on my way. Who knows? He might be doing this until he’s 80. That’s fine with me. I don’t want to have to find a new doctor.
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