Tattle-Tales and Doctors

Spring and fall I see my internist and in recent years all I ever see of him is his back as he types my answers to his questions into a computer. A few days before my appointment, this week, something new occurred. The internist’s office emailed me the questions he usually asks, “to save face time with the doctor.” I was to email the questionnaire directly back to my medical chart that I can now access online, including the results to all the blood tests I took in preparation for this appointment. I don’t see the point of going to a doctor’s office anymore. Even getting weighed and your blood pressure and pulse taken can be done with a fancy-pant gadget that sends readings through cyberspace. My sister-in-law has one those gadgets/scales and it’s connected to a nurse sitting in an office miles away. Every morning she hops on her space-age scale so her readings can tracks her water retention, heart rate and who knows what else and if adjustments in medications are needed she gets a call. If she doesn't get weighed by a certain time, a computer calls to remind her. At what point do they do away with the human element altogether and just let computers diagnosis us? It’s coming, like cars that drive themselves. Can you imagine the headlines in the future? “Hacker Accessing Medical Charts Kills Hundreds in Ohio!”

I became the village Tattle-Tale in Chief over the weekend. If you don’t want to hear the back story, stop reading because I’m going to tell you about the up-for-sale-and-empty house next door. When I work at my computer its backyard, with its enormous and ugly two story deck, is in view and that deck has become a gathering point for six or seven kids from the cul-de-sac. One side of the lower level of the deck is open so you could dive into an above ground swimming pool the previous owners took with them when they moved. The kids---ages 6 to 12---are kicking slats out along the sides of the deck, throwing landscape stones all over the place and uprooting outdoor carpeting. And the roughing housing is going to get one of them seriously hurt in a fall. One time a girl was getting picked on by three others as I debated with myself about getting involved and I hated being put in that position! Just when I decided to go out there, she was able to break free and I was left wondering if this is how it starts, that old person thing where you find yourself yelling at the neighborhood kids to quit doing anything and everything that resembles fun in their eyes. 

A few days after the fight, I saw the dad to three of the kids working in his yard so I went out to talk to him. I opened with, “You might want to have a talk with your kids about respecting other people’s property” and I told him what was going on. He wanted to go see the damage for himself and I was thinking, Jeez, now the kids will know who ratted them out! After the damage tour, my neighbor assured me that his kids will not be playing back there again and “they will be punished.” I hoped he meant a take-a-cell-phone-away kind of punishment rather than a physical one and then I started worrying about that! But the thing I hated the most about the whole episode with was feeling vulnerable, like the cul-de-sac kids would see me as a cranky, old woman they could target next for mayhem and destruction. Feeling vulnerable and my old age seems to go together like Google and maps.

Later on in the day I ratted on the kids, their father walked them over to my house. He said they admitted to doing exactly what I reported and he told them it wasn’t a tattle-tale situation on my part because I had talked to the kids about the stone throwing a couple of weeks earlier without telling their dad about it at the time, “Giving you a chance to do the right thing all on your own,” he said to the kids in a soft, teaching tone. Then the oldest boy says, “We’re sorry, Miss Jean, that we didn’t listen to you the first time.” What a great dad! I guess every village needs a tattle-tale, I just wish it didn’t have to be me.

Oh, and the results of my bi-annual wellness physical in case anyone cares... I got my Medicare mandated hug from the doctor, a clean bill of health and a vaccination to protect me against whooping cough and tetanus. (I've never liked shaking hands with doctors who are around sick people and now I have to get hugged?) I didn’t think I needed the vaccine but the doctor says that three quarters of the people who get tetanus in the USA are the elderly. Now that I’ve been vaccinated I can walk barefoot in a garden filled rusty nails, use dirty needles to shoot myself up daily with my osteoarthritis medication and get surgery done in a less than sterile operating room and not worry about those nasty lock-jaw bacterial spores getting in my blood. Not that I was planning on doing any of those things but it’s nice to keep all your options open. ©