Doctor, Doctor, Give Me the News

So, have you seen a physician during this whole Corona thing? And, don’t you wish when Corona came to mind it was still a beer? Anyways, maybe you had the check-up over the phone thing, which was pretty much a waste of time. Yep. They’ve given up asking your weight because there is no way anyone is going to tell the truth now. You’re suppose to take your own blood pressure, but if you don’t have a kit, they just shrug and write down, “patient denies having blood pressure.” It doesn’t really matter what your cholesterol, kidney, heart or liver functions are because they can’t check this, nope, which may be a good thing. I was one of the lucky/unlucky ones who saw my physician in person, sort of. It was kind of hard to tell, what with the goggles, masks AND face shield but, I get it. I unknowingly made this appointment on the last day of tax season, since that was supposed to be way back in April. I figured July would be safe. It was not safe. My blood pressure was sky high. I didn’t wanna talk about any of that, though. I wanted to talk about the fact that I only sleep a few hours a night. This is a new, young doctor. My favorite one retired a year or so ago, much to my horror. He always handed me a handful of prescriptions. “Now, just take this Vicodin, Xanax and Elavil and you will sleep like a rock.” He was correct. We were sort of raised on meds, being in a family of medical professionals when drug samples were the thing, so this suited me just fine. This new doctor, though, was pretty horrified. “Well, no, you can’t take those. You can try a very small dose of Melatonin and cut out caffeine and alcohol and try running farther and faster, earlier in the day.” Wait, what? No, just no. Go ahead and jot down, “Patient noncompliant.”