misAdventures of Workmonkey 3.0

I wasn't raised to concern myself with "minor" health concerns. It was pretty much male family policy to take trips to the doctor only in the event of broken/missing limbs, skin that was on fire, or violations of my bodily organs by sharp foreign objects (again, this didn't hold true for the women in the family. Debbie was at the doctor once a day, forever convinced she had Barrett's Syndrome, leukemia, or a brain tumor).

Part of this was due to the time my dad served in a US Navy medical ward - he had solutions for most every minor problem. If I had the flu, I was covered in Vick's Vapor rub and a towel. Sprained ankle? We'd go to Walgreen's to purchase crutches. Stress? My dad would hand me a paper bag and instruct me to breathe deeply from it. I even once slept overnight in a tub of vinegar, in response to the skin blistering I received upon falling asleep in the San Diego sun with a body full of Hawaiian Tropic tanning oil (i thought that stuff just instantly gave you a dark island tan, no matter how white you were). My father's techniques almost always solved the problem at hand, so my experience with doctors or hospitals early on was, luckily, limited. From this I gained the sense that if sick, I should be able to solve the problem myself. Further that with the society-taught notion that true, tough men never ask for help from anyone (just look at Rambo III, when Rambo sealed a gunshot wound by digging out the bullet with a knife, then sealing it shut by igniting gunpowder), and I've somehow managed to earn a certain distrust of doctors and medicines. To some extent, I believe dealing with a certain amount of pain makes us all tougher.

This sentiment has changed as i've gotten older. Not only does aging start to affect your bodies in ways you've never had to deal with, but the time you've spend dealing with minor annoyances begins to wear you out. You want solutions. You want comfort. You want your quality of life to improve. You want to know how to properly clean your 12" penis.

In response to these needs, I went to the doctor a few weeks ago. In addition to the general check-up, I wanted to discuss matters with him that I've dealt with pretty much all my life, but out of fear of weakness, never thought merited a doctor's advice. Suffice to say, these problems piled up over my twenties, leaving a laundry list of things I needed to address. That said, so as not to overwhelm him, I decided to limit myself to only telling him two items on the list: heartburn and constantly-shitty sleep (which, if solved, might help alleviate my 3rd most pressing problem: stress).

All of you who read this know i've had stomach issues forever. In my early 20s, it was constant nausea, in which I puked about once or twice a week. I self-diagnosed that problem as directly correlated to the amount of onion rings and shots of jaeger I had the previous night, and thus was able to correct the problem without a doctor's input. In addition, I've always had heartburn. It was just one of those things I accepted as the cost of being a guy who likes beer and fried mushroom. When younger, Tums usually helped, though the past five years, it has grown beyond self-treatment options. At least two or three nights a week I'm up because of it, and have to sit on the couch for a few hours before it subsides. It feels a bit like satan, the dark lord, has shot a load of steaming hot semen down my throat, to mention nothing of the sensation that Rosie O Donnell is standing on my chest while holding a few suitcases. Suffice to say, it is mildly uncomfortable. Time for some medical treatment, I figured.

After telling the doctor my lifetime of symptoms (which, in turn, was after him caressing my testicles as part of my "normal" checkup), he said my problems were beyond normal heartburn symptoms. It was possible, he said, that I had a hiatal hernia. Nothing major, it is when part of your stomach protrudes into you esophogus, causing problems of the sort that I have. He couldn't confirm it himself, so he wrote a phone number on a prescription pad and told me I needed to go to a specialist for an upper endoscopy.

Umm, upper endoscopy? I did not like the sound of that one bit.

Some internet research has revealed the following. An endoscopy is when the doctor shoves a fiber-optic camera, with robotic arms, down your throat. The contraption that is put down your throat looks like this:

I will confess, I have a very serious problem with this contraption. Maybe it is my time in a Peruvian jail, but I have a basic fear of large, long, black objects snaking their way through my throat. They don't put you under, and give you nothing more than a throat anesthetic to soften the gag reflex. Sorry, it'll take more than that for my body to accept a fucking garden hose placed down my throat for 10 minutes. And what's up with the robotic arms? What the hell are they doing in there? One look at that picture, and I realized my symptoms maybe weren't quite as bad as I have thought. Maybe I just needed more tums. And less beer. Anything to avoid that thing checking out my insides. Suffice to say, I haven't called the number on that paper. Next time, I'll keep my mouth shut, and mention only the things that don't involve big black snakes - like my sleeping problems. Which have, in course, gotten worse after seeing the above-referenced photograph. I have nightmares of large black men raping my mouth.

For now, I'll stick with vinegar baths and paper bags. Maybe not as effective, but then, I've again remembered the reason for avoiding doctors and hospitals whenever possible: Big Black Dicks with Claws.