As a young child if I didn’t feel well, Mama would look at me say, “You look puny.” Upon hearing that phrase, my first reaction would be to run far, far away. I knew that puny meant a small square of ersatz chocolate known as Ex-lax, her go-to remedy for fever and puniness. If I had a cough, I would be given “Daddy’s Beer,” a home remedy consisting of whiskey and sugar. Always on hand in the event of an emergency were St Joseph Aspirin, SSS Tonic, and Geritol. Usually, the patient recuperated with any of these remedies in a timely manner.
There was a time when I incurred excessive puniness and following her witch doctoring, she put me to bed and called the family doctor. Family doctor was the term we used for a general practitioner, simply for the reason that generally, he healed people. I heard her say to him over the phone that she had felt my forehead (fever) and given me Ex-lax, but I was no better. He said he would come by that afternoon for a check-up; back in the olden days, doctors made “house calls.”
I was lying in bed when the doctor entered the room. He placed his hand on my forehead. Yes, fever was detected. He listened to my chest with his stethoscope and felt the glands in my neck and said: She is very puny. Then he gave me a monstrous injection of penicillin and left the house. Diagnosis: Puniness.
Over the years, our medical profession has developed new diagnostic procedures as the evolution of our health care system opened the health-oriented era that currently dominates our daily lives. Doctors have new toys and as with any new toy, they are meant to play with these diagnostic tools. Several years ago, I went to an annual appointment with my family doctor, now known as an internal medical doctor. As opposed to what – an external medical doctor? I supplied them with a quart of blood, had an EKG and a chest x-ray, humiliatingly stood on the scales, and allowed them to pump my arm with a restricting cuff for blood pressure. No, I was not sick, felt fine, no pain, just renew my blood pressure medication and let me go. Not so simple. Medical toys must be used, so the objective was to find ailment or the toys are useless. Regrettably, blood tests revealed my iron was low. Diagnosis: Anemia.
I needed iron but there was no way to prescribe anything for a cure before the cause was determined. The Internal Medical Doctor recommended a colonoscopy with a doctor external to the Internal Medical Doctors Practice. Armed with an appointment with a doctor specializing in the colon, gastroenterologist, the procedure was scheduled. The day before the procedure, I consumed a gallon of liquid with the ironic name of Golitely. For the test, I was put to sleep by another External doctor – the anesthesiologist. Diagnosis: Nothing. But that just means more toys are available (tests.) Next stop, CT Scan – computerized tomography scan. Diagnosis: Insignificant cyst. Yes, finally! Another doctor, so on to an external doctor known as a gynecologist.
The visit to the new external doctor confirmed a minor cyst (too small to be significant) that needed to be monitored for a few months. So, the toy employed this time was ultrasound typography (sonagram) for six months. During the test period, the cyst swiveled away and the became “more insignificant.” Diagnosis: Ailment gone.
The overall process lasted a year and had not determined any cause for the anemia, iron tablets had corrected it, and the final diagnosis was: Asymptomatic Puniness. Mama would have given me Geritol.
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