by jphilo | Oct 13, 2015 | Top Ten Tuesday
My annual physical torture exam was yesterday, and it once more confirmed my opinion about the 10 worst things about this yearly appointment.
10. When the mammographer says, “This will hurt a little,” she is lying. It hurts a lot.
9. Breathing is impossible while in the vise grip of the mammography machine, and the command “Don’t breathe” is like salt in the wound.
8. Being weighed in the hallway without being given a paper bag to put on one’s head.
7. Those paper gowns that don’t cover what needs covering and aren’t absorbent enough to soak up flop sweat.
6. Sitting on the exam table in a little paper gown soaked in flop sweat, paging through the magazine you smuggled in from the waiting room, and being one paragraph from the end of a really good article when the doctor walks in.
5. Every evidence of the niggling condition that’s been bothering you for a month and you didn’t make an appointment for because your physical was coming up, disappears when the doctor arrives.
4. Your bad breath, compliments of fasting in preparation for blood work, blasts you and the doc when he tells you to say ahhh.
3. Blood draws.
2. Flu shot.
1. Because you are almost 60, neither the person who draws your blood or the shot nurse offers you a princess Bandaid to cover your owies.
What do you like least about your annual physical? Leave a comment.
by jphilo | Jun 9, 2011 | Family
Some weeks are just too hot to handle, and this week is getting mighty steamy. You might think I’m talking about the record breaking, never-before-experienced-this-early-in-June heat wave that’s got the whole state sweating up a storm. At least, we hope there’s a storm coming soon to cool things down. But it’s more than the weather making this week too hot to handle, though the heat was the primary instigator of events.
Think domino effect.
Think taking your 82-year-old mother to a mammogram appointment in the heat.
Think she’s already hot and sweaty before the boob smashing begins.
Think she’s really hot and sweaty after the smashing ends.
Think her daughter doesn’t realize quite how hot and sweaty her mother was and took her to Walgreens to buy a Father’s Day card for her son.
Think her daughter figured out how hot and sweaty her mother was when her mother got sick to her stomach and threw up in a plastic shopping bag.
Yeah, that kind of domino effect.
Poor mom. On Memorial Day a few short weeks ago, she was almost dancing in the cemetery, making jokes about modeling for her internment beside Dad. Yesterday, she was over-heated, smashed, and tossing her cookies at the drug store. This morning, she’s feeling better and eating again, but the whole experience has me thinking.
Why are we subjecting this 82-year-old woman with Alzheimer’s to yearly mammograms? There’s no history of breast cancer in her family. And if she ever was diagnosed with breast cancer, would she want treatment? After all, the best day she had all month was when we visited the cemetery. It’s where most of the people she loves hang out. However, if I continue in this vein, the topic could render this post could get a little too hot to handle. So I’d better stop now.
That darn domino effect.
