Bully Pulpit: Doc or No Doc?


Like many of you, I feel that the real medical expert in my life is me. Since I’ve had 46 years of experience dealing with all kinds of complications from SCI, and since my body is the lab and I’m the clinical researcher, I’m the one who knows which treatments work and which ones don’t.

But lately it’s been getting harder to know just what is ailing me. My confidence in diagnosing and self-prescribing is beginning to dwindle. Which calls for a new diagnosis in itself, and here it is: creeping old age.

Do I have a UTI, or is that headache and tired feeling due to worry and flagging stamina? Is the wound on my foot filling in or getting worse? I’ve been staring at it for so long I’m going blind. What about my bowels? Am I feeling full because it’s time to go or does it just take longer for my food to digest?

Nothing’s black and white anymore; it’s all gray.

I used to look in the mirror and see a blond tint with just a smidge of gray at the temple. Now, either my temples are expanding or my gray matter is showing through. My teeth are yellow, my gums hurt, my eyes ache, I pass more gas than a propane delivery truck, my breath stinks, and my skin — what in God’s name do you call all these little flesh flaps, moles, blotches and pimples! I have pimples again!

OK, sorry. I’ll try to contain myself.

Life is good, please believe me. I love my wife, the most supportive person in the world; my daughter, even though she is draining my pocketbook way past the customary time limit; my grandson, who is the coolest 2-year-old on the planet; my cat, who never meows; my accountant, who only bugs me once a year; and my UPS driver, who continually leaves packages of medical supplies on my porch and knocks softly. Or is my hearing fading?

This old age crap is getting old.

And to come back to the theme here — that is precisely what’s depleting my legendary ability to play doctor with my own body.

The truth is, as we age, we need good medical care more than before. And here we are in an economic/political dilemma that threatens to make all kinds of taxpayer-supported health care harder and harder to get and more and more expensive to keep. The temptation is to kiss all the Medicare/Medicaid/insurance hassles goodbye, put on our scrubs and just keep doctoring ourselves until we go broke or doctor ourselves into the grave.

But there is another way, if I dare say it.

As a nation we need to reduce our national debt through wise spending and difficult budget cuts — but we also need to ask those who have been given so much to do with a little less. Am I talking about taxing the rich and near-rich and mega-corporations and Wall Street fat cats and CEOs and lawyers and doctors? Hell, yes, I am.

So that settles it: I’m no longer a doctor.


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