Fred Wilber

I’ve been seeing my doctors a lot lately. Some of them haven’t been feeling well. My morning doctor asked me if I wanted to go first or let him start, so we flipped. It’s carbuncles, he told me, “I have them all the time.”

“What does your doctor say?” I asked him.

“They said they would get back to me.”

Sometimes you have to be stern with a patient. “It’s a staph re-infection,” I told him. “Do a blood draw for staph including C.R.P. for an existing condition inflammation and do a round of anti-staph oral meds. Also, wash your clothes in hot water and change daily, unless you have a lucky golf shirt.”

My morning doctor likes to start with “well.” “Well”, he says, “take one 25 mg. Fodafadafame in the morning and one 12.5 mg. Fondalamarama at bedtime without liquid. If you forget your morning Rx don’t take the night Rx. If you miss your a.m. you won’t need your p.m. Most people don’t last until noon. If you have time, take your digoxin four times a day with your Anglopodifine.

Lucky for you you’re retired or you wouldn’t have time to take your drugs. Your dizziness—you have that too do you? I have it on my deaf left ear. “What do you suppose it is?” he said.

“Otolith stones out of place in your middle ear,” I told him. “Lie down and roll your head back and forth for fifteen minutes and don’t call me in the morning.”

My cerebral blood flow is diminished by my cardiac irregularity, sometimes for a couple of hours if I eat anything in the morning containing taro root. Also, any physical activity, like sewing a seam on my golf glove, leaves me weary and sweaty most of the morning.

“By the way,” he injected, “your twelve-year-old hip replacement has loosened up. Too much heavy work. Forget about surgery, general anesthesia would kill you.”

Both of us were wearing down.

“Still taking your Amlopinecone, three times a day?” I asked. “Yep,” he said. “You too?”

I agreed. “And your Monomorona at bedtime and your Tolafudanox?”

“You bet.”

“Plus the fish oil capsules, Andredwine grape concentrate?”

“Sure enough.”

“Well, only one thing left—the mood thing. How about you, still doing the wacky old man thing to stave off depression?”

“Couldn’t do without it,” we agreed.

“Call me in the morning,” we both said.

“No, you call me,” we both said.

“I said it first,” we both said.