WestView

I Don’t Know Anything about Medicine but I Know What I Like

February 2010

By James Lincoln Collier

I was beginning to wonder about old Doc Suture—his idea of a check-up was to look in one ear and if he didn’t see daylight, pronounce me fit—when he announced he was retiring. “You’ll like the new guy I’ve lined up. Smart as a whip. The advances they’ve made since I got out of medical school are amazing. Oh well, that’s water over the dam. I’m off for the fairways.”

Dr. Cyberwell turned out to be a feisty fellow in his thirties with an over-supply of energy and the confidence of a water buffalo. I stripped, and for ten minutes there was a silence broken by an occasional murmured remark like, “Interesting,” and “I’ve never seen one like that before.” Eventually he emerged from my armpit like an auto mechanic coming up for air. “Do you drink?” he asked.

“A little,” I said.

“That’s what they always say. More than one drink a day?”

“Ah—I might have a couple of martinis before dinner. My wife and I sit down and talk. It seems civilized.”

“If you think it’s civilized to swill down two martinis a day, you’ve got another think coming, my friend. You’re abusing alcohol.”

“Alcohol hasn’t complained yet.”

The witticism fell short of the mark. He frowned. “Diet cola from now on.”

“Not even one teeny tiny martini?” He shrugged. “If you want to spend your golden years bantering with shadows, go ahead.” On that cheery note he sent me away for tests.

Two weeks later I turned up at his office for the verdict. “What have you been living on? Pie and ice cream? Your cholesterol is through the roof and so is your blood sugar.”

“Suture always said that I was doing fine for my age.”

“The guidelines have changed. Suture may not have noticed.”

“Don’t they send out announcements when they change the guidelines?”

“Yes, but you have to read them,” he said. “I’m putting you on a low-fat, low-salt, low sugar diet.”

“What can I eat on that?”

“Bran. After a couple of weeks of bran you’ll rather starve. Did old Suture ever give you a stress test?”

My mouth dry, I shook my head.

“I figured as much,” Cyberwell said grimly. “That’s next.”

By this time Suture had taken on a luminous glow in my memory. But the wife, as she downed her six o’clock martini while I mourned over a diet cola, said, “You better face up to it, buddy,” so I took the stress test.

When I next reported to Cyberwell, he frowned. “You have the heart of a ninety-year-old camel,” he said. “The people at the lab thought I was playing a joke on them.”

“There was nothing wrong with my heart before.”

“They’ve changed the guidelines on that, too. How much exercise do you get?”

I knew it was useless, but I tried anyway. “I walk a lot.”

“From the looks of that gut I’d say you walk regularly from the sofa to the refrigerator and back. We’re going to start using the gym.”

“Is that the editorial or the royal ‘we’?”

“Don’t be impudent,” he replied. “I’m trying to save you from an early grave. I want you to run five miles before breakfast. At night you can take it easy—fifty push-ups, two hundred sit-ups.”

It took me two weeks of phone calls, but eventually I found him. Doc Boozaway may be a little behind the times—he has copies of Look and The Saturday Evening Post in his waiting room—but there’s no tomfoolery about push-ups and diet cola. “I never saw where a piece of apple pie hurt anyone,” he told me. “It’s as American as Mom. A person’s entitled to a little fun out of life. My Uncle Fred drank a quart of whiskey every day of his life. He lived to be 97 and would have made a hundred if he hadn’t slipped while he was rock climbing.”

“That sounds right to me,” I said. “I hope you don’t plan to retire soon.”

“I’ll retire when they carry me out of here feet first. Everybody forgets things now and then. The nurse usually catches them in time.” He winked. “Nice tushy, eh?”
It was. My wife wasn’t entirely thrilled by the new regime, but she said, “At least you’re more cheerful to live with these days.”

“You can’t have everything, can you?” I said, twisting a curl of lemon over the martinis. I raised my glass. “Happy days.”

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