The Unsinkable Mollie Brown. . . Maybe (Patricia Potter)

This has been a strange, unproductive week that started with muscle spasms in my neck last Thursday.

It was as if lightning hit my shoulder, ran up my neck and exploded in my jaw. Never felt anything like it before.

Called my brother, a retired doctor, as I usually do. I’ve resisted the idea of getting a doctor of my own for years. I’ve foregone examinations I know I should have. I’ve depended on the occasional blood pressure machine in a drug store and a call to my brother or doctor nephew-in-law during a case of the flu.

This time, he prescribed an over the counter muscle relaxer, but the pain got worse -- much, much worse -- and I ended up in the emergency room. Filled with muscle relaxers and pain killers I survived the next few days in la la land.

And I made, for me, a stupendous decision. I would get a doctor of my own and do the whole examination bit. No more of this piecemeal and emergency room business.

Maggie’s post about taxes yesterday struck a nerve, because it's part of a pattern for me. I empathized over her tax bill, because I, too, wait until the very last minute (October 15th) to do my taxes and am usually startled that I owe money. I’ve already paid them much more than they deserve.

But then I've always taken procrastination seriously. More as an art form, to be completely honest.

And until now, I took it as seriously medically as I do financially. If I ignore the tax man or illness, maybe they will go away.

Problem is, they don’t.

So after running to the emergency room last Friday, I decided it was finally time to get a “doctor of my own,” and suffer through the many tests of a complete examination I’ve haven’t had in fifty years.

I discovered exactly why I’ve avoided them with such expertise.

Don’t like being poked and pricked and peered at. Never have. Never will. Spent a whole afternoon doing that, and have to spend another Tuesday and maybe more after that.

It’s not that I’ve been spared doctors. They’ve always been there when catastrophe fell, and I had no choice. There’s been five such occasions: a burst appendix; an auto accident when I did my best to destroy a perfectly good left leg. And finally a ruptured colon (not good), an operation to fix and another to refix. But in between those occurrences I survived quite well without regular visits to a doctor. Took great pride in the fact.

I was healthy and independent and considered myself the heiress of the unsinkable Molly Brown.

Going to a doctor seemed to be admitting failure in the above, so I kept putting it off.

But now I’m admitting failure. I may not be as unsinkable as I thought.
Muscle spasms brought me to my knees, but I wasn’t sure that was what it was at the time. Panic.

So now I’ve mentally adjusted myself to the fact that it might be wise to
see what’s going on inside my body and take precautions for the future.

It’s time, but I hate that fact.