I just came back from my grandson's
kindergarten graduation (which was probably the cutest thing I've
even witnessed in my 48 years). The halls leading tot he gym were
decorated with self-portraits all baring the common phrase “When I
grow up I want to be...”
There were carefully-crafted creations
of veterinarians, doctors, teachers and the odd pie-in-the-sky,
field-afar NHL hockey players. But no, not my grandson. No, when
Logan grows up, he want to be...(wait for it)...a fire-breathing
dragon. There it was, blazed on the wall in full-crayoned glory.
Of course. Why let a little thing like
reality get in the way of a dream? I mean, imagine if Marconi,
Edison, Tessler, Banting, or the Wright brothers had bothered with
reality? If you told someone 200 years ago that we would have an
International Space Station floating around the earth, they would
think you were psychotic and totally off your "rocket."
A couple of weeks ago I ventured—more
like slunk—into my doctor's office. Apparently I hadn't been there
for a little while. We can't be sure exactly what “a little while”
is in Heather-years as the office switched to an electronic system
quite a while back, and apparently my name reveals a blank slate.
Nostradamus was probably predicting the end of my doctor appointments, not the end of the world, because
it was certainly pre-2012. In reality, probably closer to 2010.
My mission, if I chose to accept it,
was to walk out of that office with a requisition for an MRI on my
right knee. End of. That's all I wanted from this visit. Total. Easy.
Simple. Singular.
Maybe due my poor medical-office
attendance, fear that I may never show up again for another five to
ten years, or the fact that when asked about my parents I may have
casually mentioned some sort of crazy autoimmune arthritic attack and
the words “breast cancer,” I suddenly had requisitions flying at
me from every corner of the room. I was getting everything from
mammograms to bone density tests to blood work for lupus. My head was
literally spinning.
“I see you aren't up to date on your
whopping cough, tetanus, and....”
I didn't catch the third horrific
disease.
He continued, “How do you feel about
vaccinations?”
I think the question made him nervous.
He didn't give me pause to answer. I think he was envisioning me as a
staunch Jenny McCarthy follower. I may have mentioned plant-based
diet earlier in the appointment. I mean, I looked the part of one
of those. So, before I could
pontificate on my philosophical and social outlook with regards to
the topic of vaccination, the nurse was locked, loaded and
administering me the needle. There is no doubt she certainly would be
the last one standing in the Wild West.
Then
came
the real moment
of panic. He mentioned the S-word. That was the straw that broke the
proverbial camel's back, so
to speak. “When was the last time you had a smear?”
I
don't know if it was because
I was holding my freshly-jabbed arm so tightly or if the look of
overwhelming
fright on my face was, well, frightening or if my attempt to joke,
“I've booked my 10-year physical
for November.
Can it wait until then?” tugged at his sense of decency, he took
pity on me and stopped the madness. The S-word would be saved for another day. Flippantly, on the way out I
asked if I could get my vitamin D levels checked. It was added to the
blood work. I had been reading a lot about ideal levels for optimal
health and was curious where I was on the spectrum. I was outside
running a little bit with my
daughter and occasionally supplementing, so being deficient in the
sunshine vitamin was completely outside the realm of reality.
He
also ordered the MRI for my right knee. In fact, I didn't even have
to hint at it. It was his
idea. Usually I go the doctor with a pre-determined
outcome in my mind.
But, today, he beat me to the punchline. He twisted my leg a certain
way, I yelped
and he may or may not have used the words “meniscus,” “knee,”
and “replacement” in the same sentence. Actually, it's probably a
fact that he used those three
words in the same sentence.
What's really in question is whether or not I heard
them.
Probably
not, because since our lovely get-together, I've run a race with my
daughter and went on a beautiful trail run with Karen and Lyndsay
last weekend. I can't remember the last time the three of us all ran
together, but we need to do it more often.
It is
therapeutic, rejuvenating
and cleansing—even if performed without the luxury of knee
cartilage.
My doctor did mention that I have superior knee tendons by the way.
Just saying. I do have
something to brag about.
We're
all dealing with “stuff”--family, work, loss. And, it is so nice
to leave a piece of the pain behind on the run. With the information
age, I'm finding it more and more difficult to find joy, and I don't
see how in reality, the world's problems can be fixed: war, killing
in the name of religion, racial inequality, shooting people in
church, throwing baby chicks
into a grinder, cruelly slaughtering pigs, caging calfs, cutting down
rainforests for beef, destroying the planet, removing the oil from
the earth, global warming, pesticides, herbicides, genetically
modifying our food without our say, Bill C-51. People
not seeing the irony of having a BBQ (of pork hotdogs) to raise money
to save the lives of cats in a shelter? How bizarre, kill the pig to save the cat? Religion, racism,
sexism—speciesm. This current reality is madness. Total madness. I'm told
this is how it is. An intervention, Godly or human, seems necessary
to alter this reality. I don't want to hear—no, I don't want to
accept—this current
reality as our future reality.
* * *
There is hope. I got
a few of my medical test results back. And, so far, touch wood, the
only problem is I am terribly deficient in Vitamin D.
I rest
my case. Reality isn't always as it appears and it can change.
So go
ahead, be a fire-breathing dragon.
