November 13, 2002
november 13, 2002
A few days ago I thought I had a UTI. (That's Urinary Tract Infection for the bastard 50% of the population -- yes, male -- that pretty much never gets one.) Normally, I'm not a big fan of going to doctors, preferring to think of them as expensive and fragile ornaments to society: you can't afford me, do not touch. This is a throwback to the days when I was a musician and couldn't pay to buy aspirin, much less get medical attention.
Of course, as I think I've mentioned before, now that I'm a real grownup with a real job and real medical insurance, I have all sorts of ailments that I never had before. And for those of you that have never had a UTI, let me absolutely assure you that this is a condition that requires ... no, DEMANDS immediate medical attention. It wants drugs. It wants creams. It wants ungents and anaesthetics and good God, absolutely anything to get rid of the discomfort.
Sitting on the toilet for the twelfth time in the last twenty minutes, for a bladder your brain knows is utterly empty but your deluded body insists contains enough uric acid to poison the Atlantic, one starts to feel a little discouraged about the point of life. One begins to feel, urgently, that the human body is a poorly designed, lamentably maintained machine. There is no real justification, (one feels), for the human body to arbitrarily discard waste product in this fashion; wouldn't it be far more efficient to find some use for it? One starts to think gloomy thoughts about the fallibility of a divine being, and the idiocy that allows women -- who are already trajectorily challenged in regards to urination and are forced to sit down on dirty seats to pee -- to have this agony inflicted on them while slovenly men that don't even wipe, for God's sake, waggle away, fancy-free.
I've received outstanding care from Kaiser, who seem to have an overflowing vault of cheerfully sympathetic doctors and nurses. At the orders of my advice nurse, a nice young man I called up in desperation from my office, I went in to give a "sample" before the appointment he scheduled for me. "Your primary care doctor isn't in town right now," he told me, sounding as sincerely remorseful as though he'd shipped her off to Australia himself. "Do you mind being seen by a male doctor?"
I often get this question from medicos. The first time I was asked this, I was going to see a gynecologist. Out of bravado rather than any actual ease, I told them I didn't mind; possibly, I was still a little vague about exactly what a gynecologist does. My first gynecologist, not a Kaiser doctor, was a grandfatherly gentleman with a kindly paternal manner. He was extremely comforting. When my medical plan switched to Kaiser, I had to change gynecologists.
The standard rule with medical facilities is that if you are a woman, and you tell them you don't mind male doctors, you will inevitably get a male doctor. There are approximately six women in the world that do not mind having a male doctor look at their, shall we say, female parts. Comparing that to the number of eager male doctors that graduate in order to look extensively at female parts, one can see how this will cause something of a imbalance in the proportion of willing patients to willing doctors. As it turns out, my new gynecologist was a cheerful, extremely chatty young man about my age. He was very professional, and very nice. I liked him. All was well.
The doctor they sent me to for my UTI was an extremely talkative, chipper elderly man who was extremely high on the joy of life. Like the advice nurse, he apologized before asking me questions.
"I don't mean to sound like I'm prying," he said, eager not to offend.
"Please," I said politely back. "Pry. Ask anything you want. And then, if you don't mind, please surgically remove my urethra."
It was a quaint, old-fashioned courtesy. After all, once a person has offered a urine sample and sat down to discuss a Urinary Tract Infection, there just ain't that many barriers of modesty left to go through.
He riffled through a series of questions, all of which I answered willingly. Anything to get over the preliminaries and go straight to the surgical removal. He made utterly incomprehensible notes in my chart -- a doctor of the Old School; no need for this snarking, new-fangled 'legibility' that's destroying the world of medicine -- then tapped at my lab results.
"You don't have a UTI," he decreed apologetically. I mumbled pitifully to myself. Maybe a diarrhetic flu virus had taken up residence in my nether regions? "However," he added, "your blood sugar was at 261."
I was still absorbed in the thought that I might have something else wrong, something not diagnosed, to pay much attention to that. "Okay," I said absent-mindedly, willing to be accommodating. "Is that bad?"
He shook his head at me. "It's not good," he temporized. "When was your last meal?"
I cast my little yellow mind back over the last six hours of non-stop snacking. "Breakfast, I guess," I said cautiously. "I mean, I haven't actually stopped eating anytime in the last six hours. So breakfast sort of turned into lunch. So maybe ... lunch?"
The doctor failed to look comforted by this. "Well, it's possible that you have diabetes."
Diabetes. In the finest Hirata tradition, which seems to have taken a chapter or two from the book on the finest British tradition, I instantly dropped forty, sorely needed IQ points.
"Oh," I said thoughtfully. Wittily, I added, "Bother."
As an afterthought, I added, "I don't think I want diabetes."
The doctor decided to take a blood stick then, and ordered a hemoglobin and fasting glucose test. "You can do it on Monday," he said, kindly. "Or you can have it done later today if you can't wait."
If I can't wait? I stared at him, baffled. The idea of making haste towards bad news was a curious concept. Perhaps it was a white thing. "I'll come in on Monday," I promised faithfully. Already, everything he'd said that hadn't related directly to my urinary tract pains was wafting away in the convenient black holes of my memory. He dashed out, then dashed in again as I was leaving, waving the white paper he'd made notes on.
"It would help if I gave you the lab order," he noted wryly.
We parted, both of us as cheerful as when we came in. My memory about the entire visit was fading at an alarming rate. Part of the whole Hirata self-defense mechanism: if you can't remember it, it didn't happen. Take notes, people. Half the US government reads from the same manual we do.
I toddled down to the pharmacy, where I gaped happily at the sick people behind the plate glass; fish are more colorful and interesting, but I was having a Wodehouse moment, and the teeming masses of viral humanity were more in keeping with my jolly mood then, what?
On my way back to my car, I discovered a white lab order in my hand, and puzzled over it for a little while before stuffing it into my glove compartment.
I say, how jolly. I had my very own glove compartment! I busied myself with emptying it out, arranging all the items in a little fan on the passenger seat, then putting them all back in again. And on top of it all, my bladder discomfort was fading away. Smashing. I drove back to work.
Denial is a wonderful tool for people with small minds, like me. We're easily distracted by shiny objects, or moving objects, or colorful objects, or -- ooh! birdie! -- so retention of unpleasant facts is conveniently displaced by the more exciting, if equally rapidly-fading, enthusiasm of the moment. Unfortunately, there are some things that just can't be avoided forever.
This morning, my doctor called me at my office. "Your test results are in," he said apologetically. "I'm sorry. You have diabetes."
"Oh," I said, in the same, perky voice I'd used to greet him. There was a small pause while I considered. "Nerts," I added, for variety.
Perhaps the doctor could hear the shrieks of thousands of tiny, dying brain cells over the phone. It can't have been the first time he had to deal with giving out unpleasant news. "I'll talk to your regular doctor," he said matter-of-factly, making the entire thing inconsequential, mundane. "It's a fairly light case, so it's easily treatable. Do you want me to send you your lab results so you can have a copy?"
I dithered. Heaven help us, I dithered. "I don't know," I said vaguely. "Do I? No. Yes. No? -- Yes."
I had no idea what I would do with it. Maybe I'd stick it in a scrapbook somewhere. I perked up at the idea. Scrapbook!
I hung up with the doctor and sat in my office cubicle, pondering scrapbooks for a little while. A few minutes later, what remained of intelligent thought came wandering back. "Hullo hullo!" it said. "What have we here? Diabetes. Hm. Wait. We have what?"
Indifference turned out to be numbness, which turned out to be shock. Denial crumbled. Shock, it turns out, doesn't last forever.
Diabetes.
Well, nerts.