On Friday morning I didn’t have coffee or breakfast because I had my rescheduled appointment with Dr Shechtman for my annual physical. The check-up was scheduled for 11:15 and I got there fifteen minutes early. There were a couple of bored looking teenagers there with their Latina mother. The kids were sitting side by side, across from their mother and both engaged with their smart phones. At one point the boy moved between his mother and me and talked with her about something. I struggled with a French future tense exercise in which I had to fill in the blanks in a paragraph drawing from a list of verbs in the infinitive and changing them into futur simple.
I
didn’t check my phone when the nurse called my name but it felt like it was on
time. The first thing she did was to weigh me and I found that I’m 95.3 kilos.
I asked her for my eight from last year and she told me it had been 89.4 kilos.
Last year I had lost 2.7 kilos from the previous year but this year I’ve gained
5.9 kilos and I’m definitely overweight. Neither the nurse of my doctor said
that it was a concern but it is and I’m going to have to do something about it.
I assume that most of the weight is of my brain as a result of accumulating
knowledge and so I figure that if I forget half of everything I know then I
won’t be so heavy anymore. But just in case it’s not all in my head I plan on
cutting down on my food portions as well.
She
also checked my blood pressure and she said it’s 120 over 70, which is healthy.
My blood pressure has pretty much always been in the healthy range. I think
only once several years ago it was high but when the nurse took it again a few
seconds later it was fine.
Dr
Shechtman did all the usual checks and everything was fine, including my
prostate. He asked if I had any concerns and I reminded him of my elbow injury
from a few months ago. I told him that it had healed quickly up to a certain point
but now there is a pink area about the size of my pinky-tip with a dry white
spot in the center. I asked him if it was possible that the wound had turned
into psoriasis. He said it looked more like scarring to him but he suggested
that I could try some cortisone cream on it. I told him that I needed the
prescriptions for my two psoriasis creams renewed.
Dr
Shechtman told me that I have a fungus on my toenails. I said that I’d had it
for a long time but wondered how to get rid of it. He informed me that I have
two options. There’s an oral medication that sometimes affects the liver and
there’s a paint that I could buy. The problem with the paint is that it costs
well over $100 and that it takes about a year for it to work. He said the pills
only take three months but he didn’t want to prescribe them until he knew for
sure that my problem is actually a fungus and so he took some clippings from
both of my big toenails. I guess he had to dig in to where the fungus was more
prominent because he hurt me a couple of times. He gave me the envelope with
the clippings and the paperwork for my lab tests, including asking them to
check my blood and urine for the condition of my liver so he will know whether
my liver could handle the oral medication or not if it turns out that it’s a
fungus on my toenails.
I
went down Bathurst Street half a block to the lab but I forgot which floor to
go to. First I went to 4 and found nothing and then to 5 where the receptionist
at the ultrasound lab told me I had to go to the 3rd floor, then I
went to the wrong room on the 3rd floor before finally finding the
right place.
I
think the nametag of the young technician that took my form and did my blood
tastes read Tanisha and she had the kind of British sounding accents that educated
people from India and Sri Lanka sometimes have. There was a bin where she told
me to put the envelope with my toenail clippings. I guess she was filling out a
form for them when she asked me if they were from the right or left toenail. I
answered, “Both” and then I asked, “Does it really matter?” and she said “no”.
She took me into “collection room #1” and took two containers of my blood. She
gave me the container for my urine and I went to the washroom. I guess I
shouldn’t have gone to pee before leaving the Bloor Medical Clinic, because I
had a hard time squeezing out much piss for the sample. It took several seconds
to pull some up and it was a piddly amount. I waited another half a minute and
tried again. I ended up with a little less than half the container of pee. I
doubt if they even need that much but I feel like a failure if I don’t bring it
back full.
Before
going home I rode to Freedom Mobile to pay for my September phone service. I
had to tell the clerk my phone number several times because when he typed it
into his computer it didn’t show up as a legitimate number. It turned out that
every time I’d told him my area code of “416” he’d been typing “647”.
When
I got home I started making coffee and heating up some food for lunch. Suddenly
I realized that the doctor hadn’t given me a prescription for my cortisone
creams. I called the clinic and the receptionist told me to go to my drug store
and have them call Dr Shechtman. I did that and the pharmacy said they’d call
me back when they heard from my doctor. I didn’t get a call that day.
I
took a bike ride that afternoon. I rode to Birchmount and Zenith and headed
east, exploring its southern side streets that went down to Danforth Rd. Since
Danforth Rd climbs at a northeasterly angle, each side street was shorter than
the last. I took Danforth Rd down to Danforth Avenue and because of the angle
it cuts off a lot of time getting home.
On
the Danforth I came up behind a middle-aged cyclist and told her I was going to
pass her. She apologized, thinking that she’d been in my way. I just wanted to
warn her so she didn’t swerve out to the left while I was going by. I stopped
at the next light and rested my right foot on the edge of the sidewalk. She
came up beside me and asked if I was going straight on. I confirmed that I was
and she said, “Then you can go ahead of me. I thought you might be stopping at
a store up ahead.”
I
took Bloor all the way to Brock Avenue and was about to walk my bike across
Bloor to head south when a car went through the red light. The driver had her
mouth open in surprise and was holding her palm towards us in the “stop”
gesture to make sure we let her by.
I
watched an episode of Mike Hammer, Private Eye. In this story a popular radio
psychiatrist is giving women relationship advice but it seems that no matter
what the situation she tells them to “Dump the creep!” But when she gives the
same advice to Hammer’s girlfriend and she takes it, Hammer gets angry. He
storms into the station during Dr Sylvia’s broadcast and starts trying wreck
the equipment. Thinking better of it he leaves and goes to his own
psychiatrist, Dr Simmons, whom he’s seeing for help with anger management.
Meanwhile, Dr. Sylvia is murdered and Hammer is the main suspect because his
confrontation with Dr. Sylvia was broadcast to millions. Hammer goes to Dr.
Sylvia’s funeral where he meets both her husband and son. The husband is a
suspect because Sylvia was about to transfer all of her assets into a blind
trust for their son Ethan, which would have left Frank in the cold. Hammer’s
psychiatrist is also murdered. It turns out that the killer is the teenage
Ethan. He has been severely damaged by the way that his mother spoke about him
on the air and used him as an example whenever she discussed problems such as bed-wetting.
He finally killed her and killed Hammer’s shrink to cover his ass.
Dr
Simmons was played by the real Dr. Joyce Brothers, who was the most famous
television psychologist of the 20th Century.
Dr Sylvia was played by
Merrill Marko, who was the original head writer on Late Night With David
Letterman and was Letterman’s lover for ten years. She created the “Stupid Pet
Tricks” and “Stupid Human Tricks” as well as most of the remote segments on the
show. 
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