The Doctor and the Realtor

 

My appointments with the doctor and realtor happened two weeks ago but at the time I had other stuff that had to published in a timely manner or be trashed or break my rule about posting no more than twice a week. I didn’t want to trash my stress induced reaction post to the election or my essay about my 1,000^th post, so here I am trying to remember the details about my above mentioned appointments.

I had to see my internist for my bi-annual and the Medical Care Wellness Check where they ask you questions we older people have learned to lie about. No, I don't have any throw rugs that can trip me, doctor dearest. How's my sex life? Only in my head, doc, but I have lots of book boyfriends if that counts. That sex life answer wasn't a lie if I'd actually said it out loud. Instead, I mumbled something about being a long-time widow. It ticks me off that they actually ask it because the medical community never cared back in the days when I was sexually active so why should it matter to them now in our Medicare years? If I had answered that I was playing the hide the bologna game on a regular basis would I have then gotten the safe sex talk? If you've done the Medicare Care test you know they ask some stupid stuff and thank goodness they don't hook us up on lie detector machines while we take it.

I was a little concerned that I was developing lung issues because I’ve been experiencing shortness of breath since I saw him last. Apparently I’m not good at self-diagnosing, even with Dr. Google’s help, because I thought it might be from gaining too many pandemic/comfort food pounds combined with wearing face masks. But my lungs were fine and my internist was more concerned with the fact that I’ve picked up an extra heart beat since I last saw him. He hooked up the EKG machine and that put a technical name of ‘ventricular ectopy and DOE’ to the extra heartbeat. Then he ordered a few blood tests to rule out stuff like anemia. Turned out my RBC (red blood count) came back on the low end of the scale but still one point within the normal range and my doctor says he’s comfortable with waiting until my next bi-annual to have me wear a Holter monitor (echo-cardiogram) for a few days to see what I’m doing when I get short of breath. I don’t need to wear one to know it happens when I jog a few yards with the dog, walk up hills and go shopping at the acres big grocery store---but he made me promise to call if I start getting dizzy or feeling faint with the breathing issue. Stress and lack of sleep can feed into the equation Dr. Google said, so hopefully as the nation heals those factors might resolve themselves. Ya, I know hope and two cents will give me something to wear in a pair of penny loafers. Off topic, but I remember going on a date in high school and my mom having me put dimes in my penny loafers in case I had to phone home. Phone booths and dimes to make a call...those days are long gone.

And, oh goody my doctor wants me to work on losing my pandemic pounds. A month or so before I saw him I’d already started cutting sugar out of my diet but I got side-tracked when the tricker-or-treaters didn’t show up. I used to get around 140 kids on good weather days and 70-80 when it's cold and rainy and since the township didn’t cancel the tradition because of the pandemic I bought enough for 75 kids. Fifteen showed up leaving me with a month of eating two pieces of candy a day. I’ve always hated Halloween for starting me on a sugar binge that would last until New Year’s Day. Not going to happen this year. Fingers crossed I stick to the two a day plan. I'm calling them multivitamins because I'm very careful with medications.

New topic: What did I get myself into? The son-I-wish-I-had wanted me to talk to his realtor friend even though he knew I liked another firm I’d had a walk through with---two lovely women in their 50s who specialize in dealing with senior citizens. Tim and his guy do a lot of business back and forth and he has known him for years, trusts him. So I had an appointment with the guy and I thought it would just be a quick walk through, meet-and-greet appointment like I had with the two women. Didn’t turn out that way. He’s been here twice. The first time with a presentation selling his history and experience and doing the walk through and he left a large, expensive looking leather notebook full of reading material on how to get your house ready to show, blah, blah, blah and the clever little devil wanted to schedule a second appointment "to swing by to pick the notebook back up."

At that second appointment he gave me so much information that my eyes and legs were crossed before he left and I think they killed a tree just to make all the papers he left behind. Homework, he told me of multiple page listings of the past 30 comparable houses that have sold in my neighborhood including all their interior photos. Plus he left every public record to be found on my house including aerial photos and Google street maps shots and some he took which he used to create a sample listing showing a breakdown of what I'd net out of a sale. I hate wasting paper and that stack of listings gave me the heebie jeebies as I sat there trying to decide how I could use the back sides of all those pages.

Dilemma time. I really liked the women but I'd be going on pure instinct since I don’t know anyone who’s used them. And while the guy wasn’t so aggressive that he turned me off, I thought he had just enough aggressiveness to give him an edge on selling my house. Leaning toward him, I thought I'd have a few months to decide between the two realtors but the day after that second appointment I got a greeting card in the mail from one of the lady realtors saying she’d seen the progress done on my future home and thought of me. Oh, crap! I don’t want to lead anyone on so I’ve got to come up with a thanks-for-your-time-but speech to deliver to one of these two companies. ©