The Endless Flow of Ink

This past week I had my yearly visit with my doctor. Believe me, it was no vacation but it did vacate the cash in my wallet. It was not the loss I needed at the time.

It is amazing about my doctor. He knows the exact cash I have in my wallet at any given time. More amazing, everything he does for me is covered by that cash in my wallet. One time I try to hide a five spot in my wallet, but to no avail. The doctor knew it was there, somehow, I’m not sure how.

Most doctors are experts in the area of extraction. Mostly, the extraction of cash from their patients. That may be what they learn in medical school, I’m not too sure.

My doctor ordered me to come in the next day for a blood test and the nurse came in to prepare me. One thing she said was I needed to fast before coming to the doctor’s office the next day.

To me, fasting is to see how fast you can eat your food. It’s a contest and I win every time. When I suggested that to the nurse, she surgically removed that thought from my head and explained that it meant I could have no food at all, not even coffee.

Looking at her with a rather somber scowl, I said, “You really don’t want to see me before I drink my morning coffee, do you?” I was snickering as I said it to her.

Without blinking, she simply said, “I’m in charge of the needle!”

I remember the last time I gave a nurse a hard time, I called her Miss Dracula and she stabbed me with the needle six times before she found any blood. I know she did it intentionally, because while she was doing it, I barely noticed a smile giggling on her face.

Being a man patient, I was not permitted to cry, although I was crying on the inside.

Never, and I mean never, make the nurse unhappy. She knows how to do the needle perfectly or she knows how to do it hurtfully. She knows more than one way to stab a patient with the needle. My nurse knew every way.

I managed to do my “fasting” according to the nurse’s instruction.

Sitting in the waiting room waiting for my appointment I was given a stack of paper and told to fill it out for their records. I have written several books in my time, but this paperwork was ridiculous. They wanted to know things about me that I did not even know about me. Are you allowed to lie to the doctor?

There was page after page of information I needed to write down. I’m not quite sure, but I think I went through 17 pens before I finished the whole batch. That’s a lot of ink.

Why the doctor needs to know all of those things about me is beyond my imagination, but I must confess that I did stretch my imagination in filling out the paperwork.

I also must confess that without my morning cup of Joe my tiny gray cells were not functioning normally. It also affected my eyesight. As I looked at each page it became more blurry, which affected my reading ability. I had no idea what I was reading.

With my reading ability so affected, my writing ability was completely out of the operating room. I noticed I was starting to write in a foreign language, which I did not recognize. I’m not sure if my spelling was bad or if I was writing in “tongues.”

It was then I remembered seeing a prescription my doctor wrote for me once. On that paper he also was writing in “tongues” because I could not interpret a word he wrote. So, the doctor probably will be able to read my paperwork.

I kept writing, but I am not sure they were actually words I was writing, trying to get to the end of the paperwork before the nurse called me for my blood work. I am not sure which is worse, the blood work or the paperwork. Both have taken a lot of blood out of my body at the time. I was concerned that the nurse would not find any blood left in my body.

I am not sure, but I think the amount of blood the nurse extracted from my person was equal to the amount of ink I used to fill out the paperwork.

After I got home, I began to worry about what I wrote on the doctor’s papers. How much trouble would I be in the next time I saw my doctor? He is always looking for something wrong with me and he never finds anything.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized my doctor was a medical doctor and not a psychiatrist. If a psychiatrist would read those papers, I probably would be admitted to the psychiatric unit in the nearest hospital available.

I thought of what David once said, “Let the words of my mouth, and the meditation of my heart, be acceptable in thy sight, O Lord, my strength, and my redeemer” (Psalm 19:14). 

What a man says reveals what’s in his heart. I can let somebody pull words out of my mouth, or I can let my heart speak. The choice is mine.