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checkups, watches her weight, exercises, and is always popping vitamins and supplements to improve her “wellness.” Nine years ago, when we both turned forty, she had a bone scan, a colonoscopy, and a mammogram. The results were normal, but she still keeps shopping around for new doctors who will do more tests and is constantly jonesing for more medical procedures and blood panels.
    “You’re abusing the system. Our health care system is in dire straits because of you,” I tease her, but she points out that it’s only responsible preventive health care and I can’t argue with that.
    By the afternoon, I am positively google-eyed so I take a break. In a fleeting interlude of sanity, I review my “past medical history” (the inane redundancy reminding me of my father’s oft-repeated comment: “Where else would history be but in the past?”) Believing that most things get better on their own, I rarely go to doctors. Most nurses are like this. We’re level-headed, pragmatic, generally optimistic types who don’t tend to think the worst. We’re more likely to take things down a notch, not jump to the conclusion that a cough is pneumonia or a headache a brain tumour. We brush these things off, saving ourselves for the real, big-time problems. Maybe it’s because we’ve been exposed to medical problems that are so much worse that we are grateful for everyday aches and pains. In fact, most of us have a rather skewed perspective because of our work. There are times when I’ve been in a group of people at a concert or on the subway and look around in amazement, marvellingthat none of them are intubated, unconscious, or hemorrhaging.
Wow, most people are healthy
, I am reminded.
    Myself, I’m the opposite of a hypochondriac; I think every little pain or discomfort is nothing rather than
something
. I stay away from doctors. Don’t get me wrong, I have worked with hundreds of them, many of them excellent, a few outstanding. I respect them and trust them, but for myself, I keep clear of them or choose ones who tell me what I want to hear, like an elderly cardiologist I went to see many years ago. He prophesied that by the time I’d need cardiac surgery, they’d be doing it with laser beams and robots. He has since retired, but I’ve ridden on the prediction of that
Star Wars
era at which we are now at the forefront. Yes, many heart problems are being fixed that way, without using big knives, but not mine, not yet.
    Now it’s finally time to come clean with my own health history and face up to the fact that I’m not exactly a “virgin” patient as I like to think of myself. Here we go:
    A few years ago, while I was working in the ICU , I was sprayed in the eye with lung secretions from a patient who had HIV and was hepatitis C positive. I was freaking out and in my terror kicked up quite a ruckus in my hospital’s ER . “I must be seen immediately,” I demanded. “I’ve been exposed to biohazardous material!” When that didn’t work, I reminded them that I worked here and had patients to take care of.
    Yeah, let me get back to risking my life in this dangerous job!
    They wouldn’t budge. I would be triaged just like everyone else, and since I wasn’t bleeding, unconscious, or having chest pain and the place was hopping busy, it would take a few hours to be seen. In case you don’t believe that I didn’t get special treatment, while I was waiting to be seen I happened to catch sight of the brilliant physician with the BBM , walking down a corridor outside the ER .
Maybe she can move things along!
I called out to her. She looked back, but at first glance all she saw was a patient in a hospital gown. When she recognized me but realized that my problem involved my eye, not the part of the body she specialized in, she lost interest and waved goodbye.
    No longer enjoying any insider status, fuming, I settled down to wait along with the rest of the walking wounded. In due course, I was seen by a doctor, my eye