by Pat Fortunato
Whack any moles lately?
Bet you have. It’s sad but true that unless you’re obscenely young, you have a fluctuating variety of minor (we hope) medical ailments popping up all the time.
It is truly like playing Whack-A-Mole. Only with doctors.
Sometimes it’s literally a mole. The dermatologist gets to whack that one. But then it’s your back. Did you strain it? Sprain it? What’s the difference? Can anyone ’splain that to me? Anyway, next day the back pain is gone, but your Go Pro (also known as the Squatty Potty) is not doing its job. Or the Activia is doing it a bit too well and you have unscheduled bonus rounds you could do without. This gives new meaning to the words Game of Thrones.
The next day you’re fine in the poop department, but you feel like shit anyway because you didn’t sleep the night before.
But then, you do sleep well, so you feel like doing some serious walking. Whoops. Forgot about that thing going on with your feet, so that even wearing those hideous shoes only a podiatrist could love cannot prevent your feet from feeling rotten.
Listen To Your Big Toe. No, really.
Remember those stories about farmers who could tell when it was going to rain by their aches and pains. It’s true! Well, sort of. Something about the low pressure on the outside letting your inner pressure do whatever it does to make something hurt. And that’s our science lesson for today.
Meanwhile, my big toe feels fine, but I ate something for lunch that didn’t agree with me. Didn’t agree with me? What the bleep does that mean? Did I say something that offended the tuna fish? Is the peanut butter angry because I prefer smooth to chunky? I’ll never mention that again, Skippy, I promise.
And don’t get me started about doctors. You have so many of them that even your specialists have specialists. I suspect that if I went to my podiatrist about my big toe, he’d send me to someone who specializes in small toes. Or pinky toes. And if one of these specialists doesn’t find something wrong, the next one will. Guaranteed. To me, the word “specialist” means that they specialize in referrals.
Where is Doc Martin when you need him?
He’s the doctor on British TV who treats everything, and if you can, watch him on one of your streaming services or YouTube. It won’t cure your ills, but for 45 minutes, you won’t care. And there’s no co-pay.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Abdel1jWLzw
But alas, back in the real world, you get to a certain point, all too quickly I’ve discovered, when you have a whole list of recurring “moles,” like digestive problems or acid reflux, with nifty acronyms like IBS or GERD. You also may experience more exotic conditions like peripheral neuropathy (a hands and feet thing), vestibular hypofunction (that’s an inner ear problem). Or more common ailments like hearing loss (WHAD’ya say?) or neck pain, probably from the tension of worrying about all the other whack-a-moles.
And this can make you feel OLD. One elderly woman, walking out of my building, said to her companion, “I wonder what will hurt today.” Happily, they both were smiling. If you haven’t already, please develop a finely honed sense of humor as soon as possible. You’re going to need it.
In the immortal words of Roseanne Roseannadanna, “If it’s not one thing, it’s another.”
And if you’re reading a piece about medical whack-a-mole, you probably recall the Gilda Radner character from SNL who said that. On the other hand, if you’re old enough to remember, you probably suffer from some memory loss, so go directly to YouTube where she holds forth on the dangers of smoking and Other Things. Laughter, as the saying goes, is still the best medicine.
Not to get all morbid about it, but Hamlet, contemplating whether to off himself or not, kinda agrees with Roseanne when he speaks of “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” Face it, even that hangnail is seriously annoying.
We must remember, however, lest we become, god forfend, depressed (involving a therapist who probably won’t take your insurance), that however many moles you whack today—or tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. . .
It’s much better than the alternative.
After Pat left publishing (or perhaps it was the other way around), Pat started a blog called I Can’t Believe I’m Not Bitter, which morphed into My Age is Unlisted. These days Pat is posting on Substack, which, Pat is told, is the new hot thing.