The Clubhouse Sessions: A Night of Magical Medical Tales
My wife and I live in an ‘active’ 55+ community in Central Florida. To tell you the truth, it’s all of Jerry Seinfeld’s fantasies and then some. But perhaps you’re wondering why our community is designated as ‘active’. Some people allege the designation has something to do with following a rule that gets us a break on our taxes. I suspect something else.
My guess is that calling our community ‘active’ is a snide way of mocking us for the fact that we go to see the doctor A LOT, then we sit around the clubhouse in the evenings talking about our experiences.
Who Needs the Mouse?
Ah, yes. There’s nothing quite like spending a quiet Tuesday evening talking about the sights and sounds of modern healthcare. The magic of sterile exam rooms, canned music, and being poked and prodded with an array of instruments that may or may not be children’s toys the doctor brought from home is incomparable.
We may live just minutes from Walt Disney World, but who needs the Mouse when your schedule is so full of medical appointments that your health insurance company has made you a separate category under ‘expenditures’?
Yes, dear readers, there is something exhilarating about visiting a medical building alive with activity. A building where people who smell like formaldehyde for a living scurry around among patients who seem to be under foot like so many chihuahuas in grandma’s heavily-dated 1970s kitchen.
There is something truly mesmerizing about that glimmering white structure as it beckons the downtrodden in desperate need of the therapeutic benefits of spending 3.28 hours in the waiting room, followed by exactly 91 seconds with the doctor. Can it get any better? Oh yes, it can.
My Doctor Said…
It’s one thing to bask in the unmatched experience of reading a waiting room magazine dating back to the Truman administration. It’s an entirely different matter to sit in a room of people older than NASA (motto: shooting stuff into space faster than Elon Musk) and listen to endless stories detailing exactly what each of their doctor’s said that particular day.
“My doctor said I needed to have my pancreas removed through my nasal cavity, robotically of course, to correct a problem with my retinal fluid count,” Sally would say. Not to be outdone, Marvin would opine about his doctor’s advice to “combat that nasty sore on your big toe by soaking it in Liquid Plumber while watching Dukes of Hazzard and eating Toasted Shredded Bran Squares With a Smattering of Prunes.”
Some of the stories I hear make me seriously wonder if my friends and neighbors are seeing actual doctors. Perhaps they are unknowingly talking to the medical office janitor, a guy who thinks it’s funny to put on a white jacket and dispense large doses of knowledge having absolutely nothing to do with medicine.
And Don’t Forget the Prescription
The crowning achievement of any medical appointment, whether real or imagined, is getting a prescription. To us old people, a prescription is like a York Peppermint Pattie — except for the fact that the actual medicine that comes with it is secured in a nuclear-grade container impossible to open without four pounds of explosives and the local fire department’s Jaws of Life. York Peppermint Patties are a lot easier to unwrap.
But anyway, you have done well if you walk out of the doctor’s office with a script in hand. A prescription is an official declaration that whatever you perceive is killing you on that particular day is serious enough to require the doctor to take the time to scribble illegible things on a pad, things you hope the pharmacist will be able to decipher on the other end.
My friends, you would not believe some of the prescriptions I have heard about during the Clubhouse Sessions. And the sheer volume of some of their daily drug regimens, too! It’s no wonder that some of my neighbors aren’t available to do anything before 2:30 in the afternoon. It takes them that long to take their medications.
But alas, you can’t stop fate. All of us are destined to join the club at some point. Right now, I’m still young enough to be a mere spectator. But someday, and maybe sooner than I think, I will be the main event. Yay, me!
