Healthcare Debate


Along with the cold hard facts and a sense that I was becoming a social pariah, I chose to snuff out my last butt eight long months ago. As much as I enjoyed my morning nicotine jolts and the camaraderie of my smoking section pals, it was becoming increasingly apparent that the habit would need to be slain. I was beginning to visualize myself shivering beneath a flickering street post twenty years hence while fumbling to spark up a hand rolled smoky stick as young parents nervously nudge their small children forward as they admonish me to move along and get back to my tobacco den and with my own kind.

I knee it would be a difficult task to abandon my noxious rituals and morning retching, and on a routine visit with my doctor I made the error of mentioning my scheme to quit cold turkey and with no help from anyone. Don’t get me wrong.  He is very good at what he does, but is of the opinion that this entitles him to proffer a great deal more smugness than is tolerable to me. I was certain that he seized upon the opportunity to assist me in shaking the smokes solely for the opportunity to claim the glory for himself if I were to succeed. He wrote a high dollar prescription for the latest and hottest quit smoking dope on the market and told me to come back to endure him again in four months. I would desert the man in a heartbeat if I wouldn't have to put up with the angst of baring my soul and everything else to somebody new. He already knows of my failings and foibles and malformed anatomy so I suffer and grin and bear him.

I left four months later from that visit insecure in the fact that I had just been medically certified to be a borderline obese man. I had gained nineteen pounds in that time and was told by the almighty that as pleased as he was to have gotten me off the tobacco, if I didn't right my sorry ass to have mercy on his scale the next time I came to visit him I would be subjected to a battery of tests that would make me wish I had shunned the sweets and booze and thought to bow to Jack LaLanne.  Damned doctor and his knowing what is good for me. Well, I righted my sorry ass.  I gave up my sugary comforts and took it easy on the hooch. I suppose that doctors are a necessary bane of a civilized society. But there may have been some merit in dying a young drunken wretch beneath a bridge rather than to have to suffer the indignities of being the only species on this earth that spends a third of its efforts and resources to maintain its own nest and another third to provide for its own vanity.  It may have been better to have befriended the pitiful and smoked openly and freely in bum camps and alongside wheezing men nicknamed, “Tater,” “Rabbit,” “Skeeter” or “Gator.”  
Having chosen a more righteous path though, I was forced to put up with good advice at home also. “I’ll get you some light beer, some yogurt, and maybe my brother Ted could loan you a few pairs of his slacks until you can take off some of that weight.” The sad and sick of it though is that I had nobody to blame but myself. It’s human nature to cower and then look around for someone or something to blame your own ills on. But I was, well, larger than that. I downsized to a smaller drinking vessel and cast a curse on anything in the house that contained high fructose corn syrup. I rose to the challenge and strutted into my doctors office in another four months wearing my own slacks and with no fear of stepping onto his scale. And then when I expected  he was about to heap praise and good news on me, that son of a bitch looked straight into my eyes and said, “No need to thank me for saving you all of the money you would have wasted on the cigarettes, and I see you’re out of the sweat pants. But I did notice a small lump on your thyroid so I’ll set you up with an endocrinologist for a series of fine needle aspirations.  No cause for alarm though and I wouldn't worry much right now as thyroid cancer takes decades to kill you.  So I’ll expedite a colonoscopy for you"