Lying shirtless on the cold bed while some strange woman attached stickers to my chest was admittedly unique. Much different then when I used to bartend at this club where on “Male Stripper” nights drunk women would buy buttons off my shirt for 10 bucks each! Those were the days! I looked up at the nurse and said, “It sucks getting old!”. “It sure does.” she said as she flipped on the EKG to see if she was getting a decent reading. Another year, another physical. . .

I make sure to go have my physical each year. I remember an ad campaign a while back challenging men to have the brass tacks to go have an annual physical. Good idea. Many men are just chicken. I often said in the past I felt like a grew up in hospitals. I didn’t, but like most of us I’ve had my share of life altering experiences in them. So avoiding the doctor was part of my life’s plan. The fact that my father died at 33 put the fear of death in me early. As each year went by it was, to my anxiety filled way of thinking, even closer to the year the doctor was going to tell me I’d had it. So I didn’t go. Suddenly I turned 40 and I thought, “How come I’m not dead yet?” and something in me said I needed to go figure that one out. So I went and had a physical. You could read all about the trepidation and fear I went through last year. This year was much the same, other than I knew a bit more about what was going to happen.

Last time around I got lots of the “tisk, tisk” looks from the nurse as she unwrapped the blood pressure cuff from my arm and said, “153 over 90. That’s a bit high.”, then told me to get undressed and sit under that little rice paper sheet. I knew it. I WAS a goner!!. But in the end, I was sent away with some medicinal help and some encouragement regarding lifestyle changes I had been making on my own in the last couple years.

This time around I looked at the same nurse as she started pumping up the cuff until my hand turned blue and waited for the result like a lotto pick. “122 over 60″, she said while handing me another white paper sheet. It seems between my tiny little pill and my daily exercise we got a handle on that one. Good. Still, I was not really feeling quite right. We needed to chat a bit more.

As most of you long time readers know I’ve always had bouts of anxiety & doom. It passes for a time, then shows up again to bully me around for awhile, then runs back into the dark corners of my room. Thing about anxiety, besides it’s propensity to wring your brain like a damp sponge, is that it often likes to give you all sorts of strange feelings in your chest. It plays with you. Then if you’re a bit of a hypochondriac, you swear your having a heart attack. Then add childhood into the mix and you’re soon finding about 25 reasons you just know you’re on your way out. Thing is, you don’t tell anyone because you know, that they know you’re just “touched”. They won’t believe you or at the best chalk it up to your eccentricities. Either way, it’s nothing like sympathetic. So in your head, alone, you know you’re not long for the world! You start picking songs for your funeral, figuring out who to give your stuff too and mourning that one drunken night you never actual had, but wanted to have.

But this year my fine friendly family physician decided that it was time to address my unique world view. Thus the EKG just to verify that I was not going to drop over. Blood tests to eliminate the hidden boogie men and a little magic wand to quiet the racing mind. I’m not sure I believe in magic, but at 41 I’m willing attempt a few milligrams of faith.

Growing older isn’t really so bad. Only, you may have to drop the price for your buttons. I’ll let you know if I start believing in magic. At least until my next check up. . .

. . . I just dropped in to see what condition my condition was in . . .