A VISIT TO THE ANDERSON VALLEY HEALTH CENTER
LIKE MOST PEOPLE, I steer clear of the medical profession, never ever going near it unless absolutely forced to. In any case, like millions of Americans, I cannot afford to get sick. Last week, thanks to a stipulation of one of the State’s more parasitic bureaucracies, the licensing division of the State Department of Health, I was compelled, under penalty of fine, to report to the Anderson Valley Health Center for a physical examination. Physicals, especially honest ones, can be a real pain in the arse, literally, so I wasn’t looking forward to the visit.
MANY OF YOU WILL REMEMBER the typical sports physicals of bygone days. An old alcoholic doctor would give you a chuck under the pills and smack your knee with a rubber hammer and that would be it. The old saw bones was reduced to football physicals as his entire practice after having become a clear and present menace to public health. I much preferred the old drunk medico’s approach to health care. You were in and out of his office in two minutes.
I KNOW I’M HEALTHY, at least physically healthy. I don’t feel I’m in need of life style advice form medical people. So I filled out the questionnaire honestly. After all, there’s no point lying to people you don’t know. “What did I have for dinner last night?” Three bottles of Bud, a pint of Hagen Daz Rum Raisin ice cream and a banana sandwich on Wonder Bread. The desired answer, of course, is boiled tofu, raw carrots, skimmed milk, and for a special treat, a hunk of sea weed from the Lewallen’s Sea Vegetable Company. But I run a little every day, do a few push ups, take an aspirin, a multi-vitamin and one tab of E which for some reason I think enhances the quality of my dreams. I pay no attention to diet and often drink to excess. I don’t smoke. I know I don’t need a physical.
WAITING FOR THE ORDEAL to begin, vowing to myself not to remove any of my clothes beyond my coat and sweater, I enjoyed a fast scan of Mendocino County Substance Abuse Prevention Newsletter, especially relishing the articles by some of the more prominent County Substance abusers. It seems rather obvious that having drug dealers and pot smokers warning the young off the stuff is contraindicated, but as we know, Mendocino County is not the kind of place where the obvious regularly occurs to the authorities.
AS THE EXAMINATION BEGAN under the supervision of Judy Nelson, I was greatly relieved to be handed a receptacle large enough to accommodate the obligatory urine sample. The last time I underwent a physical, I was handed a cup about the size of a thimble which I blasted from my grasp by Niagara of my flow as I suffered total panic when the message to the off valve failed to reach it in time to prevent me from hosing down one entire wall of the men’s room. My organ snaked wildly around like an uncontrolled fire hose as I tried vainly with both hands to bring it back under control.
DO YOU EVER FEEL MORE FOOLISH than when you re-enter a doctor’s office full of strangers with a cup of urine in your hand? A vintage year, what bouquet! What body! Superior to that of any number of local Chardonnay’s and probably roughly the same alcohol content.
AFTER TURNING IN MY URINE sample, I was directed to a room down the hall. “Wait there for Peggy, she’ll be right with you.” “Right with you” always means a solid twenty minutes’ of solitary anxiety. There’s never anything to read in these white, sterile, ominous rooms. In this one there were a couple of fascist art posters, one an apparent reproduction of a photograph of a bucolic glade which completely destroyed whatever natural charm it had and the other a cartoon depiction of a cat; the kind of thing dumb people would describe as “cute.” I was very tempted to rip both off the walls. That kind of “art is very bad for public morale. Accompanying the white bleak is some sort of industrial hum, apparently the building’s heating system. I was reminded of how much more reassuring the dirt floor clinics of Asia were to the typical American clinic or hospital. Over there, you would see cats, and bugs and all sorts of people would wander in and out. You’d finally be given opium ash for whatever was wrong with you. Midwives handled ordinary complaints and handled them for less than five bucks and hour. They seemed just as competent as any doctor I’ve known here.
PEGGY McFADDEN FINALLY arrived and began the exam by taking my blood pressure which, my enemies will be chagrined to learn, is that of a twenty-year-old and means the AVA will appear under present management for another thirty years, at least. I trust Peggy implicitly. She knows what she is doing and doesn’t fool around, nor does she make a lot of unreasonable demands. Only once did she throw a scare into me when she asked if I would like her to examine my prostate.
“GOOD GOD NO! Really, Peggy, we’re good friends, but we aren’t that close!” I had a sudden image of Peggy reporting directly to the girls at the Unity Club, “You’ll never guess whose cranny I peered up today!” There is certain information it just wouldn’t do to have in general community circulation.
THE TYPICAL MALE DOCTOR, would insist on a prostate exploration. Neither does Peggy require the other male doctor favorite -- the pill check. The old “turn your head and cough” nonsense. The entire examination is conducted with a minimum of embarrassment. I emerge from the Anderson Valley Health Center into the weak winter Boonville sunlight, self-respect intact, the least unpleasant physical I’ve endured.
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