Small Ruminations While Cutting Grass

Jackson Browne--"Doctor, My Eyes" (mp3)

Out here in the semi-suburbs, when I mow my lawn, I can't help but butt up against neighbor's yards and lives. Ever since I cleared out a lot of weeds and crap earlier this spring, we can step out of our front door and see between the trees to a couple of houses that we used to could not see. One of them right next door.

You other homeowners know what it's like to step behind a lawnmower, as I do right now, its carcinogenic fumes and whining racket envelope you in a private world, one that allows you to ponder the meaning of your semi-suburban existence. It's actually quite cathartic, the closest I get to a meditative state in an average week. My mind is free to drift.

So I glance at the house next door, where our new neighbors reside, and I notice several things--the overgrown lawn, the red wheelbarrow in the exact location where it has been sitting since last fall, the ambitious yard and tree projects that had stalled.

Their arrival last spring was huge and dramatic--the gutting of most everything inside the house, painting, trimming, Porsche and Lexus in the driveway, the clearing out of their backyard, the letting it be known to us through other neighbors that they wished we would take care of some things on our side of the line as well, talk of trees coming down, the rebuilding patio, and finally, the huge outdoor party last summer when all of their old friends and neighbors came to see their new home!

And now, they are getting divorced. You see, the husband is a doctor, the wife is one of those small women possessed with a kind of demonic energy. They are workout fanatics. The wife is a runner. The husband, I don't know, because I've never seen him. He leaves the house every morning about 4AM to go work out, then puts in his long medical hours. And, he harbored a terrible secret which came out before Thanksgiving--he wanted a divorce, he wanted to leave, he has been angry with his wife for the past 10 years. That's all I know. Except that the guy was never home, never around for his kids, completely into himself.

The doctor, unfortunately, has become almost the stereotype of the modern physician. Caught up in conspicuous consumption. Buying whatever he wants without hesitation--expensive car, nice house, health club membership. Too busy for his children. Ready to move on to a (likely) younger, (likely) better-looking wife.

And, unfairly, I know, that's where some of the anti-health care reform arguments break down for me. Some people are so worried about what it will do to the doctors. The doctors won't be able to make as much money. The doctors will have to continue to worry about "frivilous" lawsuits if we don't have tort reform. Well, guess what, a doctor nearly killed my wife with a misdiagnosis, and we couldn't even bring a "frivilous" lawsuit against him because 1) we couldn't afford to front $20,000 to hire expert witnesses and 2) our chances weren't deemed that good because she did not die.

If you don't think that today's doctors are even offering prescriptions to us that we don't need simply because of mutually-beneficial relationships with drug reps, you are not paying attention.

When did a career in medicine have to become a path to excessive wealth? When did it start attracting people who had monetary interests which so powerfully overrode their concern for the welfare of others? When did it create practitioners who refuse Medicare patients because they aren't worth it? When did it lead to the creation of a culture of people who supposedly live to save lives but who live shallow lives with excessive personal spending, tax shelters, and values that can only be characterized as "new money?" I know these are naive questions. I don't care. I think they're still valid, and I don't hear anyone else asking them.

Do you really think that if a doctor's potential income were cut in half that people wouldn't pursue that line of work? I don't. I think if that changed, it would attract a different kind of people. Better? Who knows. As motivated? Well, maybe not by the money. For all the talk of the burgeoning costs of being a doctor, I certainly don't see it impacting the lifestyles of the doctors I know. What, will they have to buy used BMWs?

Here's my solution: I'd like to see us find ways to subsidize the cost of med school, so that a doctor didn't come out of there with such tremendous debt. Maybe a young, graduated doctor could do public service health work for two years, in exchange for that debt, and maybe that work would help to re-sensitize him or her to the original values of the profession. Perhaps then a doctor wouldn't require such a substantial salary and could return to being a respected member of the community instead of sitting on a lofty perch above us.

I know I'm generalizing. I know there are doctors that care about more than money. But I also can see the sad, empty house next door where a man has put his personal needs related to being a doctor above his wife and children. It's a life out of balance in a way that I think many doctors are out of balance.

But what do I know? The grass is cut. I going to take the lawnmower out back and put it away and sit on my deck and drink a beer.

Medical Morons in the Age of Information

Bad Medicine - Bon Jovi (mp3)
The Sick Bed of Cuchuliann - The Pogues (mp3)

Americans might well be the dumbest and most-easily duped people in the history of the world. Here we are, in what we claim to be an Age of Information, but none of this information prevents us from being stupid. In fact, one could argue, the glut of information makes it much easier to be stupid--er. Stupider? More stupider?

We have people on both sides of the political spectrum who are railing against the swine flu vaccine. Celebrities who have no more medical training or knowledge than you, me, or the Keebler frappin' Elf are claiming that the vaccine is more dangerous than the flu it aims to prevent. (Yes, I'm talkin' ta you, Bill Maher, you friggin' smug ignorant sumbitch.)

I've asked probably a dozen doctors and nurses and pharmacists, some friends and some mere acquaintances, their opinion of the vaccine, and almost all of them just shake their heads. Of COURSE my children should get vaccinated, they say, with the unspoken DUH on the end of it. Not a one of them hesitated or mentioned concerns about how vaccines are a deadly secret scourge to our way of life... because that crap is right up there with black helicopters and the X-Files.

Welcome to the Age of Information, where 95% (98%? 99%?) of all professionals educated in the field of medicine agree, yet where journalists and wackos focus half their attention on the 5% of kooks who disagree so they can be "balanced." We might be enlightened, but we've got a wacky notion of balance.

You want useful information on the subject of vaccinations? You want the history of paranoia? Listen to a few segments from NPR's On the Media. Here's one on the H1N1 vaccine, and here's one on the hysteria that broke out in Britain because a girl died of a brain tumor but people thought she died from a vaccine. Educate yourself, for Christ's sake, rather than looking to pandering, demagoguing kooks to tell you what to think! (And if that category must include me, then so be it, but go learn for yourself!)

It's important to note that the criticism is not so much aimed at medical professionals, but rather at the people in charge of wielding and managing the information. If you want the real reason why newspapers are dying, it's because they do an awful job of filtering anything for us. They'd rather report cotton candy than broccoli. And even when the broccoli shows up, its been cooked to death and drowned in so much butter you'd think it was served at a movie theater.

As yet another report on OTM suggests, part of it's because science reporters are all but extinct. I don't know if this is a killer factor, but it can't help.

What I do know is that when a significant portion of the population has boonswaggled itself into thinking it can't even trust its government to tell its people when a vaccine is safe and effective -- or as safe and effective as anything else involving medicine and the human body... people sometimes die having their tonsils removed, for fuck's sake -- then the Age of Information truly proves that too much of anything, including information, does more harm than good.

Culture is in one kind of trouble when the only people who can read the Bible and other books are priests and monks. But maybe it's in an altogether equally-treacherous kind of trouble when we all think we're equally capable of being experts about anything and everything just 'cuz we can read shit off the Internet.

The Age of Information risks eroding all sense of trust in any kind of educated authority. And this is a distrust that breaks political barriers. One side believes Ann Coulter or Rush Limbaugh are honest and knowledgeable, which is a crock, but the other side has doctors blathering on the Huffington Post with the same kind of crap.

And, yet again, as always, the future of our society must rest and rely on those of us in the middle. Let's hope we hold up and keep our heads above the rising tide of the Information Tsunami.

Billy & the Doc-In-The-Box

Hello Time Bomb - Matthew Good Band (mp3)
Kiss the Dirt - The Brent Flood (mp3)

Herein lies the true story of my experience on Saturday, August 22, 2009. But first, some background. [NOTE: This entry is of a TMI medical nature and may not be suitable for young children or those with weak stomachs.]

Last Tuesday I emerged from my morning shower to notice an annoying zit-looking thing halfway between my belly button and my, well, junk. Because I seem to attract biting insects and arachnids of all stripes, I kind of assumed it was a spider bite. Wouldn't be the first time.

Because I'm a moron, I decided to treat it like a normal zit, and I tried popping it. When it didn't pop, I went on with my day and forgot about it.

On Wednesday morning, I emerged from my morning shower to notice that what had once been a spider bite-looking thing had spread. I mentioned it in passing to the wife and a nurse pal, and they suggested hydrocortizone and a bandage. Mmkay.

By Thursday night it was worse, and the wife thought it looked like a poison ivy thing. But because I'm a moron, I didn't think long enough to realize that the damn things didn't itch. So we just dumped some Calamine lotion on it, and I tried to go to sleep in spite of the fact that the lotion burned like the fires of eighteen hells.

By Saturday, I was honestly worried. It burned and hurt and looked downright ugly. (Yes, it took me 36 hours after the Calamine Lotion Incident to get past my stubborn hatred of acknowledging my vulnerability to the medical mysteries that plague mere humans.) I decided I couldn't wait 'til Tuesday or Wednesday -- school started Monday, so there wasn't a snowball's chance I could go Monday -- so I decided to go to a Doc-In-The-Box.

At 1:40 p.m. on Saturday, I entered the CVS. At 1:48 I finally managed to find the damn Minute Clinic that's inside the CVS. I signed up and was third in line. At 3:17 I got called in. At this point, the Minute Clinic had sucked away 89 minutes.

Technically speaking, you shouldn't call your business the Minute Clinic if it takes a dude 90 of the damn things just to get in the door.

Also, technically speaking, this Minute Clinic wasn't a "doc in the box." It's a "nurse practitioner in the box." The NP at this particular Minute Clinic looked -- I shit you not -- like Famke Janssen with a pinch of Jennifer Garner.

At this point, I had this inevitable flashback to that Friends episode where Joey and Chandler spend too much time watching porn? And then they go out into the real world where normal people have normal non-sexual encounters? And they can't believe they're not getting jumped and humped by all these random women? (No, I've never been propositioned by, nor have I ever propositioned, anyone in any such situations. For the record. But that doesn't keep me from having random pop-culture references or acknowledging the Famke-ness of a hot NP.)

"So how can I help you today?" Famke asked. At which point I began to unbutton my pants.

Now let me explain. I was already mighty nervous about this rash thing. Sitting in the middle of a CV-f*#kin'-S and finding yourself so bored you actually read the ingredients of Axe Body Spray only makes the nerves more fragile. At one point I had these weird flashes where some Devil Mosquito had injected me with bubonic plague or gonorrhea, as if I were being tested like Job... or maybe I was bein' PUNK'D! Where are you, Ashton, you motherf*#ker?!?!

So by the time I got into her "office," which is roughly the size of a high school locker, I was practically shitting myself with all these wickedly irrational fears. I wanted to get out of there ASAP, and the best way to do that was to get right to the point by showing her my rash.

I hadn't even undone my belt all the way when she was, like, "Whoa whoa whoa there!"

And I was, like, "Oh. Um. I swear I wasn't dropping trou. My rash is right here." And I gesticulated with my hands in the area where my World Wrestling Federation belt buckle might be.

"So, I can see this without... you know..."

"Oh... Ohh! No! I mean, yeah! Of course! I would've warned you! Totally!"

Nurse Famke relaxed a little at that point but kept her distance. Which, in her office, was maybe four inches away from me. "OK, let's take a look."

I basically drop my shorts so that I look "hip hop" and gain "street cred," which is to say the shorts are clinging desperately to the last curve of my butt lest gravity pull them to the floor. Somehow she feels more at ease with this look -- maybe because I'm keepin' it real, yo -- so she bends down to inspect these strange mega-zits along my waistline.

We talk like this for a few minutes. She's staring down at my crotch and asking me all these detailed questions, and I'm looking around at the pretty fluorescent lights and pretty little ear scope thingies.

Finally, she says, "blah blah blah Folliculitis."

And, I'm sorry, really I am, but I had to ask her to repeat it because I thought she said something vulgar. Something along the lines of "I'd like to f*#k you like this."

So she repeats the word and says, "It's an infection of the hair follicles. Bacterial infection."

Of course that's what I have! "Um, how does, uh, someone get, um, Fuglyitis?"

"Full-LICK-u-LIE-tiss. It's pretty common, actually. It's not that big a deal, really. I'll prescribe you some antibiotics, and it should clear up in 48 hours give or take."

After 30 minutes of paperwork and a few calls, I'm out the door of the Minute Clinic $65 poorer and having lost far more than one minute of my life. One hundred thirty-two minutes, to be exact.

As I'm driving home with my diagnosis, I call my former roommate Don, who's a doctor of pharmacy in Atlanta. Don quickly calms me some more by saying a lot of what Nurse Famke said. Folliculitis is fairly common. Sweat and dirt and a small open cut or hair follicle is all you need. Yada yada.

But then, because he's my former roommate with a twisted sense of humor, he has to take it one step further. "Still, you need to take it seriously if it's anywhere near your crotch," he says.

Gulp. "Why?"

"Because if it spreads it can turn into Fournier Gangrene."

"Fornicate... wha?"

"Gangrene of the scrotum."

At this point I almost wrecked our minivan. It's saying shit like "gangrene of the scrotum" into the receiver that people simply can't afford to hear as they're driving at high speeds on public roads.

While I'm swerving and instinctively reaching for my junk, as if a single human palm covering it could protect it from words like "Fournier gangrene," Don's still talking. "The smell can be pretty unbearable, because it's basically dead flesh, and it smells like a corpse. You can smell it all the way down the hall in a hospital. And the surgery... well that's the kind of surgery doctors talk about all the time 'cuz it's so extreme. They have to remove the necrotic flesh on your ball sac, and if it's run up your shaft at all it just gets worse."

I didn't say anything. I was wondering whether a grisly wreck might not be a less painful fate than Fournier gangrene. I imagined having my balls forced to live inside some fake plastic scrotum (no, that's not a Radiohead song), like they were hamsters or something.

But Don wasn't through.

"By the way, I'd love it if you'd be one of my groomsmen."

"Don, if I'm still a man with a scrotum by the spring, I'd be totally honored."

The Brent Flood offered their song gratis for promotion, so please consider taking a listen to them! The Matthew Good Band -- now just Matthew Good -- is from Canada, so they have to rock.