Doctor Doctor: Part Two

Pain Management

I went to get a back injection last week. I have to get them periodically for back pain. The doctor is Iranian with just a hint of an accent. He moved to America when he was 4 years old. A very matter-of-fact kind of guy that seems more like a mechanic than a doctor, but he's done over 40,000 of these injections so I like him and have confidence he knows what he's doing. When I went in for the first shot I didn't know what to expect. They had me lie down on my stomach and clipped a little doohickey on my index finger to monitor my heart rate. One would think they were monitoring so that if my heart rate went up they could administer some type of sedative to calm me down. But that was not to be. As I felt the needle going into my back I got nervous and my heart rate did indeed jump up. At that point the doctor yelled at me loudly "CALM DOWN BUDDY!!" which actually worked because I was so shocked I forgot about being nervous.

Heads Up

It was a simpler time during my formative years back in the early 60's. Our washing machine was a big metal tub designed to hold the water and clothes. A hand crank on the side served to turn the agitator and clean the clothes. Two wooden rollers mounted above the tub acted as wringer to squeeze out most of the water before putting the clothes out on the clothes line strung across the back porch.

A friend of mine recently told me that his brother's arm went through one of those wringers. Ah, the silly pranks brothers play on one another. While it was a simpler time it was also a time when cuts, scrapes, bruises and a broken bone here and there were commonplace.

The place was Boston, Massachusetts. I must have been eight or nine years old at the time. My aunt and uncle were about to move to Texas, a place I only knew as a far away land. My parents were preparing to host a going away party for them at our house.