Kinsler: Affairs of the heart (or how it was Natalie's time at the hospital this time)
The resident short person has had an exceptionally tough day, and I doubt that I’ve been much help. What happened is that Natalie had a medical test at the hospital today.
Now, Natalie meets the strictest southern Italian standards of indestructibility, but according to the calendar we got from her church (it has a different saint for each month, and I particularly liked Miss February) Natalie is but four months younger than the resident codger. Accordingly, the doctor(s) have been examining my beloved with increased scrutiny lately, and a few months ago they heard a murmur from her tidy little innards that thrilled them not one bit.
So they scheduled her for a photo session featuring her entrails. This required a camera stuck down her dainty craw under light anesthesia, which requires a six-hour fast. And anyone who has been married will tell you that a six-hour fast does not improve a spouse’s composure.
Worse than that, it turned out that she’d spent last night scrolling through the Internet to learn more about today’s test and the condition they might be testing for. Do not do this, for by the time Prof Google, MD, is through with you, you’ll be in the position of anyone who’s ever read a medical dictionary out of boredom or curiosity. To wit, you will find yourself suffering the accumulated subtle symptoms of every disease ever discovered.
In Natalie’s case, she mentally compiled a cheery list of everything that can go wrong during an internal photo session, including the Scraped Esophagus, the Horrible Residual Taste, and the usual risks listed in every hospital’s Consent for Treatment form including drug reactions, bleeding, swelling, and that old favorite, death.
Speaking of which, Natalie is fine. The doctor came into the waiting room to fetch me, simultaneously rescuing me from HGTV (I do not know how those young couples expect to afford those huge houses or why they’d wish to.) The medical team got unusually good photographs of the Inner Spouse, and it seems that whatever they were testing for is Mild to Moderate. She’s due for a follow-up in six months.
I drove her home, where she staggered around before finally settling down on the couch with a cup of tea. “Thank you,” she said.
Mark Kinsler, kinsler33@gmail.com, lives and works in a smallish house in Lancaster, sharing and caring with Natalie and two exceptionally suspicious police cats.
This article originally appeared on Lancaster Eagle-Gazette: Kinsler: Affairs of the heart (or how it was Natalie's time at the hospital this time)
