Let’s Play Doctor

 

Seems this Covid-19 pandemic is clogging up the hospitals. All the doctors and nurses are busy trying to do their daily diligence wrapped in plastic. All the beds are filling up with patients who can’t breath.

Too many patients means the overflow must be shipped to another hospital or clinic or military ship until they are full.

And when there is no room at the inn, where does the ambulance take the shooting victim or the car crash victim or the overdose victim or the pregnant victim?

If the medic or EMS can’t stop the bleeding, the medical facility will attempt to cope with limited resources.

When the call goes out to stay at home, what will you do?

Self Help

There was a time when gigantic buildings with corridors and sparkling clean rooms with big windows and adjustable beds were not built. The local doctor would have to be called to alert of an accident or baby due. He’d grab a leather bag filled with ‘doctor devices’ (for the fairer sex was designated to nurse status) and arrive as soon as he could.

Until then, the family was the only resource for pain relief and comfort. Without any medical training, cold compresses to reduce fevers, bandages made from bed sheets and a bucket to catch whatever came out of the body. Other than that there was the praying and the wringing of hands in anticipation of a medical professional arrival.

Self Diagnosis

So here we are with all the social distancing and quarantining and fear of catching (or spreading) the cooties, even the doctor won’t come around. Just like teaching or office meetings or family gatherings, everything is done through the wire to your computer screen.

The doctor, nurse or whatever medical professional answers on the other end of the line can see your face, hear your voice (just like in the examination room) and record your complaints.

They can’t listen to your lungs, take a blood sample, check your blood pressure or take your pulse. If there is an opening in the skin letting liquids out, the person on the other end of the screen can’t reach through and put a band-aid on your boo-boo.

They can prescribe some pills or potions for you to go get at a pharmacy and take on a schedule to be followed up by another call, to check to see if you have improved or croaked.

You would like the doctor to have some empathy and compassion for you, but you are just case #13978-6 and the chart must be referred to before recognizing your name.

Self Evaluation

You know ‘You’ better than anyone else. You may have symptoms of something abnormal that you do not understand or a pain that won’t subside.

If you go to a medical professional to explain in detail your mental, physical or social ailment, you are a stranger. Test will have to be performed and diagnosis of the most likely of known similar reactions and possible chemical or physical adjustments to ease the pain or better the daily experience of living.

No medical professional can cure what you have done to yourself over the years. All the pizzas and fries, staying up late, partying too hard and worrying about everything from your job to your kids to your car breaking down won’t go away. It is all part of who you are and what you have become.

Breathing a little harder when you cut the grass?  Coronary artery disease; heart rhythm problems (arrhythmias); and heart defects you’re born with (congenital heart defects)? A heart arrhythmia is an abnormal heartbeat. Your heart may beat too quickly, too slowly or irregularly.

That pain in your knee when you stand up, is that just old age and creaky joints? Knee pain may be the result of an injury, such as a ruptured ligament or torn cartilage. Medical conditions including arthritis, gout and infections maybe the cause of knee pain.

You can certainly check online at all the different sites with every diagnosis and cause for every ailment with a multitude of solutions, but no cures. Maybe you can pick up a hint from ‘Ben Casey’ or ‘Grey’s Anatomy’? Maybe a visit to old doc ‘Marcus Welby MB’ or ‘Doctor Quinn, medicine babe’ will solve the aches and pains?

There are no going back or redoes. What hurts today that didn’t hurt yesterday, may or may not go away. You are the only one who will know.

Worried yet?

If you attend a session with a medical professional, they will astound you with words you can’t pronounce (unless you know Latin) and give you the ‘Fear of God’ preaching to follow their instructions or else.

Or else?

That is the point. There is no cure for life; there is just a timeline for when it is over. All the potions and concoctions may only delay the inevitable.

There are those of us who travel around the sun with frailties we shy away from, but they can’t. Sometimes all the healthiest practices fail no matter how hard we try.

Get A Shot

I’ve lived in a time where there was little pain. A few bumps and bruises along the way, but now it are different.

Without thinking about it, there was Polio, Smallpox, Aids, Ebola, Influenza, Cholera, Dengue fever, Hepatitis B, Measles, Mumps and the common cold going around while growing up.

Maybe a healthy immune system or those shots of Penicillin given to me as a kid or the practice of staying away from sick people have kept me alive this long?

Now there is a shot (or two) that promises that the news will change from body counts, lock downs and fear (as if politics wasn’t enough) and I’m almost in the age group to be a prime candidate.

How are you feeling?