Medical Sparring

My father.  The infamous Oso.  The Bear.

Just as when one is dealing with his spirit animal, one should always proceed with caution with my paternal parental unit.  Not everyone is ready for his wit and charm, but doctors in particular seem to struggle with quite how to deal with the man.

In Oso's not-so-humble opinion doctors are by-and-large "quacks".  The many years of medical training they have is bunk, and they have no idea what they are talking about.  He has stretched the patience of more than one member of the AMA, leading one to proclaim my father "the most non-compliant patient I have ever seen."  And, this particular doctor used to be a prison doctor!  That statement actually exists in a medical chart.  It also happen to provide my father with a peculiar point-of-pride.  In his mind, this meant he won.

With mom's passing, I have inherited the dubious honor of accompanying my father to the more important doctor visits.  We arrived and signed in with almost no incident.  When the nurse called my father's name out into the lobby, we were of course sitting opposite from the door.  Across all the other patients, my father bellows back, "Here I am!  Aren't you glad I cleared my schedule for you?"  This should have been the nurse's clue to suddenly feel sick and pass him off to someone else, but she decided to hang in there.

She tells him to step up on the scales.  Little did she know what this would involve.  He hands me a ziplock bag......yes, a ziplock bag.......and begins to pull things out of his pockets.  His keys.  His knife.  His glasses.  His cell phone.  His change.  His wallet.  His pen.  His glasses holder.  His mints.  and more stuff I cannot recall right now.  Just as he was about to step up, he then felt the pocket of his shirt and said, "Oh, you better hold this, no telling how much it weighs."  I am pretty sure the nurse rolled her eyes when she saw him hand me a business card.  (I know I did.)

She records the weight and he steps off.  He says to me, "I have to remember the other pair of shoes next time.  I bet they are a half pound lighter than these."  Now, if you knew my father, you would understand that half a pound was not going to make a huge difference.  The man is 6'4" and overweight.  There will be a lot of pounds recorded no matter what.

The nurse leads us to the exam room and begins to update the charts.  This is where my father starts really having fun.  This is his warmup for the doctor.  It's like a great big game of Balderdash where he tells a lengthy story in response to each question and the nurse must try to decipher the truths from the lies.

The best one today was when she asked if he had been hospitalized since they had seen him last.  His response, "Why of course not!"

And now, the whole reason I have to be present:  I respond, "Yes, he was hospitalized in Dallas at Baylor.  He fell - "

Dad interrupts, "that wasn't anything.  I was going along, you see there was a hotel at the hospital and of course it was no where near the hospital, but there were these hallways, and they claim I got off my medications, but I was walking to go see Dixie, and I went down this hall and may have slightly run into the wall, but I think I just missed my turn....

I interrupt, "Missed your turn!?!  Dad, you knocked yourself to the ground and didn't know what year it was."

"Well I rarely know what year it is!  And anyway I was trying to get up and no one would let and then they called security.  I wanted to examine that column, because you know 300+ pounds hitting it had to have cracked, but I couldn't find a crack nowhere and I told them I didn't want to go to the ER, so they hauled me to Dixie's room, and then she chewed me out, and HEY! Come to think of it she called you and you made them take me to the ER!  It was your fault, you little stinker.."

"Dad, again, you went off your meds, and you weren't acting right, and YES I made you go to the ER, and "

"I'm going to get even with you..."

"Right, like right now?"

He laughed (you, see this is our "normal" dynamic), however, the nurse was not quite sure what to make of all this.  I summarized for her, "Yes, he was hospitalized.."

"But.."

"Dad, shut it."  He realized I had declared the game over, and he conceded.  I continued, "he missed his medications regularly enough to have some issues.  They got him straightened out, but there are some medication differences compared to what the doctor here prescribed, so we would like him to review that."

She looked at me with relief, as she was clearly out-matched with my father.  She made her notes and then began to take his blood pressure.  Now this man has suffered a heart-attack and has a medication list a mile long.  You can probably guess that high blood pressure is among his medical issues.  The nurse looks at the machine and looks at me with alarm.  "Is he feeling ok?"  (I'm guessing she had decided he was a mental case and would direct all of her questions to me.  Smart lady. )

"He's acting normally."  Again, "normally" being relative.....she showed me the result and it was low.  As in, low enough to barely register.  Zombies and vampires have higher blood pressures.  I said, "I don't think that is right.  He takes it regularly and runs higher than that."

Dad looked at me with some concern at this point.  "What?  High?"  (He can't hear, so he's guessing at the conversation.)

"No, low.  What do you regularly run?"

"I don't regularly run."

"No, Dad, your BLOOD PRESSURE, what does your BLOOD PRESSURE REGULARLY RUN?"  "Oh!  I don't know.  I take it with a portable wrist cuff.  I usually take it in the morning, but if I take it after I've been moving around, it's higher."

"The NUMBERS DAD, WHAT ARE THE NUMBERS???"

"Oh!  You want the numbers?"

"Yes."
"Well....."
The nurse at this point asks him if he feels ok, is he dizzy?

He grabbed his chest and popped his eyed wide and pretends to start to fall off the exam table.  She paled.

"Dad!  Quit it!"

He began to laugh and told her he felt fine.  She resumed breathing.  (Although at a heart doctor's office, one would think she would be better equipped to handle a sudden heart-attack situation?)  She shakily started to take his blood pressure on the other arm.  The numbers kept getting lower.  Dad kept assuring her he felt fine.

I suggested we try another machine.  She responded we'd have to see what the doctor said.  A technician came in to test the ICD unit implanted in my father's chest.  He saw the blood pressure machine and said, "Wow, are you feeling ok?"

Dad, excited that fresh meat had entered the room, tried the grab the chest and die routine again.  The technician was not as gullible as the nurse.  Everything checked out with the ICD and as he started to roll his cart out said, "Well, looks good, we'll see you next time!"

Dad pointed to the blood pressure machine and responded, "Well, don't get ahead of yourself, we better wait and see how this turns out!"  The tech laughed.  The nurse almost fainted.

Finally, the doctor arrived.  Now, this doctor has had the pleasure of ten year's worth of verbal sparring with my father.  He is unafraid, brash, and can go toe-to-toe with him anytime.  This is probably why this is the ONLY doctor my father has ever made ANY attempt to please.

The doctors launched right in:  "Well, what is happening with this blood pressure?"

My father, "I don't know!  You're the doctor!"

Unfazed, the doctor grabbed his arm.  He looked at me and raised his eyebrows.  I said, "He's not acting any weirder than usual."

Dad started to say something, and the doctor put his finger on dad's lips and said, "Shhhhhh.  You are weird, so no weirder than normal is ok.  This machine is wrong."  He asked the nurse to get him another machine.  She was all-too-willing to get out of that room - she was obviously over my father's charms.

The doctor asked dad how he had been.

"Well, I've been trying to behave myself," And, then, "but that is hard for me" and the doctor simultaneously said, "I know that is difficult for you."

See, perfect doctor match for my father.

A new machine was brought in and the blood pressure was determined not to be an issue.  Dad relatively behaved himself for the remainder of the doctor's examination.  The doctor said he seemed to be doing better than he had in a long time, he didn't want him to change anything, and he would see him in 6 months and do an echo at that time.

My father, said, "hey!  You didn't say anything about my weight!"  There is history here.  This doctor has threatened my father with surgery, told him he wouldn't see him anymore because there was no point, punched my father in the stomach (that was a particularly fun visit to observe) and bribed my father to lose weight.  Now you understand the ziplock bag and practical stripping prior to stepping on the scale.  My father has come to look forward to the challenge of proving to the doctor that he is wrong, and that my father can lose weight anytime he wants to.

The doctor pulled the charts back up and reviewed them....."What?  You lost 17 pounds!  That is good!  Keep it up!  Or, do we need to try a new machine there?"

Dad smiled like a little boy who had been praised by his father.  "You weren't going to check!  You used to bet me on my weight, you would have owed me big, this time."  The doctor laughed and dismissed us.

We scheduled his next appointment and as we were walking out dad leaned over and whispered, "Let's go eat.  I have some celebrating to do.  I haven't eaten all day, which probably accounted for most of that weight loss."

I rolled my eyes, and made sure I saved the next visit on my calendar.