2000-09-08 - 20:47 MDT

September 8, 2000

Doctors and Bugs

Most everybody is doctoring right now in some form or another. My memory woozeled it's way back to the time before Blue Cross and HMO's. My birth doctor, Dr. Weiss, a fairly fat man, about 5 foot 3 inches tall and with a shiny bald head, he had an aura of good will surrounding him. My youngest memory of him is that he talked to me as one adult to another, and man -- I was pretty young at that time and that made me feel grown up. He seemed to find real meaning in my prattle.

When I was pretty young Mom took me to Dr. Weiss to see why I had a runny nose and itchy eyes all summer and a head cold all winter. As she suspected the results of the patch test showed a heavy allergy. To, guess what, Russian Thistle -- Tumbleweed the weed that clogged the fences on the prairie when dead and dried and which occupied the major part of each vacant lot in Denver, greenly waiting to assault and batter my nose. Thus began the years of frequent desensitization shots, continuing until my tenth grade in high school.

He diagnosed St. Vitus Dance when Mom took this skinny, tired, draggy kid in to see him at the start of fourth grade, he had me taken out of school, prescribed potions and powders and put me on a strict regimen requiring me to eat one fourth cube of butter and drink one half pint of cream at each meal -- above and beyond what was used in meal preparation. The two items I loved above all became a torture to me and soon made me want to hurl the whole meal, I had been warned though that I still would have to eat the butter and drink the cream to replace what I spewed. Every morning I would ride the streetcar across town and walk to my cousin's house and spend the day there, reading usually, when my cousins were in school. Summer vacation time for them allowed me much play time with them. I fattened and at the end of a year Dr. Weiss said that I no longer suffered the twitchies and was cured. My celebratory mood was exuberant for quite awhile, followed by a gradual return to my knobby kneed, elbowed and big eared skinniness.

Then came a time that I would ride the streetcar over to see him in the fall and get a flu shot, run to the carline, go home, strip, get in my hated pajamas, grab all the spare covers and burrow in shakin' 'n' achin' till finally I would fall into a troubled sleep. The next morning I would be fine -- no flu that year. No Pneumonia either.

Over the course of the years I was able to converse with Dr. Weiss he would talk to me until his next appointment came and sometimes if no one was due would talk extensively. He always answered my questions forthrightly and explained what I didn't understand. He would send me home with medical journals to read before I could understand much. Early on he saw my interest and curiosity about things medical and fostered it. He quit going to Germany three weeks every year to catch up on the latest in medicine and procedures, about the time Hitler held that whole nation captive. Later in life it came to me why he stopped going, I am sure it was because he was Jewish.

The good Doctor intended to finance my way through medical school and probably put me in his practice in place of the son he never had. But, I became obsessed and and heartstricken with this young lady in high school. What boobies we were, we were in love and made plans to elope -- she to find waitress work and me to find some kind of job or other. Fortunately her Mom had big bucks and bought her daughter a new car. The romance was over, never to return, my heart was broken and bleeding but eventually healed leaving just a scab and a scar. My grades had gone to zilch and I left to go to work. By the time I got my head straight the beloved Doctor had passed through the Big Waiting Room to his ease and comfort. He was a God to me, I still miss him.

I was reading this journal today which recounted the new trouble this horrified young lady was facing with great distaste -- Cockroaches! Brings back memories too. Mom always feared having Cockroaches but the trails of sugar ants scarfing up the bits of crunchy Mr. Goodbar scattered by my clumsy attempt to eat the durn things in one bite was about all the pests in the house but me. One morning Mom noticed a dried blood spot on my sheet and figured that I had been picking at scabs in bed, but then the spots started showing up on their bedding too. Mom and Dad knew immediately what the problem was -- bedbugs. Then came the Reign Of Misery, Mom would wake us up in the dark, we would assume our stations and the lights were turned on and quickly we would spray the visible critters. We would spray the seams of the mattresses. Finally exhausted we would remake the beds and into them, collapse. On the weekend the bedding was washed, everything flexible was over the clothes line, the mattresses were in the sun and turned frequently, the bedsteads were put in the sun with the cracks and crevices sprayed. In the house the baseboard areas were sprayed every which way and the window casings the same. The floor was scrubbed with clorox water and soap. Then with a short respite everything would be put back together again and attempted slumber was committed. Our bedroom could have competed with the Love Canal as far as contamination, on those nightly exercises we breathed in as much spray as we did air, and then we would lay on the sprayed covers. We survived, and Mom got over the huge blow to her self esteem. She was blameless of course, but that didn't matter -- she hurt. The one thing she did was to ask me to avoid going to movies at the sleazy, cheapy movie theaters. She suspected that is where our infestation originated, and she might have been right.

What a weird mind and an unusual combination memory brings, Doctors and bugs.

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