Who is Your Doctor?

It must have been some time in 1974 when the new cubicles were installed in the newsroom of The Blackfoot Idaho News, where I was an employee.

My friend and co-worker Emily was a brassy woman, vivacious, outspoken, experienced, competent in the English language.

Emily’s competence as a reporter and photographer made my job easier. I seldom had to correct or discard something she had done.

Hey. It was a newspaper office. There’s rough talk sometimes. The portable cubicles, a concept new to us at the time, provided privacy we never had before; conversely, the cubes didn’t always give us privacy we thought we had.

Several of us on the editorial staff were having some kind of a racy discussion. Emily, thinking she wouldn’t be heard outside the cube, said: 

"Sex is a pain in the ass."

The publisher of the paper had a cube just a few feet from mine. When Emily’s comment floated out over the newsroom, the publisher, usually a sort of straight-laced fellow, leaned out of his own private cubicle and said: 

"Emily.  I think you're doing it wrong."

A doctor story

A doctor told me recently of an incident that happened during a time when she practiced medicine in the tiny hamlet of Yuma, east of Greeley on the plains.

A patient was brought in who was suffering excruciating pain. He had been working in the harvest on a farm when a black wasp flew into his ear.

The wasp didn’t know how to get back out. So the insect began stinging the man inside his ear, over and over.

The doctor told me she tried to wash the thing out. Lots of water, no result, no relief for the patient. They tried oil. Same lack of result.

Finally the doctor used surgical tweezers and pulled the insect out – piece by piece. Once enough pieces had been removed, the wasp finally died and his remains could be removed with the tweezers and water wash.

Ouch. The doctor told me this story while she was stitching up a minor incision next to my left ear. Sunspot removal.

Somehow, I hadn’t felt a thing.

Pro life

My primary care doctor, the one who had sent me to an associate for the skin procedure, is a Catholic.

When I first visited her, I did not know she was of the faith. By and by, one gets to know another, even in a carefully distanced doctor. When she mentioned offhandedly that her father is a deacon, I was pretty sure, so I broached the subject.

Sure enough. I got myself a Catholic doctor, by the “luck” of the draw. It was comforting when I realized this fact. Why?

As a Catholic physician, she does not perform abortions. The very thought would give her the cold shivers. You would have to consider her to be “pro life.”

Hmm. You realize, I’m sure, that the political establishment which is promoting abortion is also promoting euthanasia.

Euthanasia is the act of putting someone “out of his misery.”

Think about it: My Catholic doctor is dedicated to my good health. She wants me to live. It is her every goal that I will live. This gives me comfort.

Don’t know about the non-Catholic doctor guys.

My last name

I had a run-in with someone on the telephone last week. I was attempting to do business with this someone. She insisted that I reveal to her my “last name.”

Don’t know why, exactly, but this always makes me balky. In her file, on a screen in front of her, this person already had my account number, our federal business tax number, the transaction number, my merchant number and yes, even my Social Security number. Plus she had all three of my phone numbers.

I just didn’t think she needed my last name as well.

She said, rather curtly, “Everybody has a last name.” I responded, “Liberace? Bono? Ann-Margaret? Cher? Sting? Madonna? Elvis?”

She said, “Elvis had a last name. It was Presley.” I said “Oh. Did you do a lot of business with Elvis?”

We agreed that we would hang up, and that I would try another day to reach a more compliant agent. Click.

Capitalization

Here you go, Lucille Rockne fans.

As a member of an advanced English class taught by Mrs. Rockne, I was being a difficult student, drawing out a discussion far beyond the time necessary for it.

I said I refused to believe it was necessary to capitalize pronouns when referring to God or Jesus.

“Why should I capitalize ‘Him?’ ” I said with my best I-am-18 sneer.

Mrs. Rockne would often stand up behind her desk at moments like this. This time however, she remained seated and asked, “Tom, you capitalize ‘I’ don’t you?”

The quick Laura

One evening I asked the lovely Laura, “Can you tell me the meaning of the word ‘calisthenics?’”

She can be droll. She said:  "It means jumping to conclusions."

-0-

Words of the week: Euthanasia and Euthenics. In Latin and Greek, euthanasia means a painless, happy death.

In English, the meaning has broadened. To us today it means an act or method of causing death painlessly, so as to end suffering. This is an act advocated by some as a way to deal with victims of incurable diseases. You simply kill them.

Euthenics, a closely related word, deals with the improvement of races and breeds, especially the human race, through the control of environmental factors, as distinguished from eugenics.

Ah Margaret Sanger. What foresight. What brilliant science. What a heroine. Mainly because of her, more than 3,000 babies are aborted in this country every day. Every single day.

Most of those aborted are black. Negro. The idea of this is to improve the race. Genocide in the Sudan? Don’t even talk to me about genocide in the Sudan. As horrific as it is, it’s a drop in the bucket.

How about genocide right here in the good old USA, right up the street at the local Planned Parenthood clinic.

Invisible, clean, tidy, politically correct genocide. Thanks again to Margaret. Wonder if she had a Catholic doctor. At least she’s out of her misery.