All of the events are true. Names have not been changed. No one is innocent. Viewer discretion is advised.
I've alluded to my weight change over the past year and over the past few years. Here is some graphic evidence:
Yes the pictures are grainy. The point is they are from my honest-to-god medical record. Just in case you can't read the numbers or you don't recall them from my previous posts, they go up, and up, and up, and then up some more.
In case you aren't capable of thinking in terms of graphs, here it is on a graph:
It's like my weight is on an airplane. And it's flying off the charts. So from August 2008, it was 153, to August 2009 it was 192.
As you can see, I do have a fancy-schmancy medical record. There are no paper charts, no flipping around and paper shuffling at my NASA doctor's office with its NASA scale. No no, everything is done on a computer. So from the second I check in until the second I check out, my medical information is all stuffed into a computer where it belches out charts and graphs and ratios.
In January, I was sick. I suffered for a few days, then decided I had tolerated enough nonsense and it was time for medical science to intervene. The last time I had been at the doctor's office before January was in October, 2008. In October, I weighed 163lbs.
When I enter the doctor's office, before I come near an examining room or a tongue depressor or a doctor or even a thermometer, I have to go directly to the scale. The scale is of course in the common area, where all the nurses and doctors or any other passerby can see me sweating and pooping my pants as I prepare to board the scale. I then have to stand there and await my sentence, watching the numbers roll higher and higher on the digital readout. The nurse, silent during this process, watches closely and scribbles down the result on a piece of scrap paper. I typically kill this time by taking off my shoes, dropping my purse and asking if the nurses accept bribes to skip this part or falsify the evidence. Some laugh.
Typically, this is the point at which the horror is over. It is brief and stabbing, not unlike an injection, and then it's over.
We then proceed to the thermometer (there seems to be only one per floor, must be HMO cost cuts), more scratch paper scribbling - this too is in the common area. It's like being a cow at a cattle auction, being paraded around and prodded before a bunch of spectators.
Finally we stop in the exam room. Before asking me why I'm there or making any small talk, the nurse typically takes my pulse and blood pressure (manually, impressive!).
Once all this is done, the nurse pokes a few buttons on the computer and my chart appears. She translates her scrap paper information into chart-ese, the computer beams it to a satellite, the satellite beams it to the international space station, the astronauts are amazed at my BMI, and then the information is beamed back to the computer.
Today was no different. The nurse was an older, heavily-set, no-nonsense woman who had seen a lot of whiny patients that day, for sure. Some are the small-talk type. This woman was not. We sat in silence as she poked at the keyboard transcribing her scribbles into something that a doctor could later read and decipher. She verified my name and birthdate, etc., etc., and continued clicking around and entering numbers.
I stare at the computer, willing my nose to stop leaking, as I see her sending my information to the space station.
Then the computer made a noise and an error message appeared.
In the years I have been going to the doctor, this had never happened. I was interested and leaned in closer to see.
The no-nonsense nurse either didn't care enough to say or took such pity on me that she didn't mention it, but the error message wasn't something wrong with the computer, or the program. Oh no.
The error message was about me. More specifically, my weight.
The astronauts had noticied a problem. The weight couldn't possibly be correct.
The error message read something like: "The amount you have entered is X % over the last amount entered. Please verify this is correct before continuing."
"The amount you have entered is X % over the last amount entered. Please verify this is correct before continuing."
THE COMPUTER JUST CALLED ME FAT!!!! I am so fat that it doesn't register! It is off the chart! My fat does not compute!!!
I was mortified. For the record, I weighed 182lbs then. I don't even know what the astronauts thought the last time I was there in August (and weighed in at 192). They are probably just lucky that my fat didn't cause the space station to come crashing back into earth.
If I go to the doctor's office on Friday and another error message is involved, that might be the end of my dieting adventures. It may well be the end of any adventures. You will probably see me on late night tv, holding the nurse hostage with an enema shoved in her ear, both of us standing next to a smoking heap of used-to-be-computer. The next segment will be the space station hurtling towards Cuba with astronauts trying to parachute to safety - their kittens life-jacketed in animal-carriers. Then there will be bits with people who knew me being interviewed saying, "We were afraid this would happen. None of us wanted to say...."
So there. Can you see why I'm a little concerned about going to the doctor's office?
Lives are at stake here. Astronauts lives. And even kittens.
If you need me, I'll be in the kitchen eating like a shop vac. Tune in later for more updates. Or, you'll see me on the news.
Thank god the staff room was empty when I read this. AND that I had JUST peed. Otherwise I might have pissed myself laughing in the company of coworkers.
ReplyDeleteI love you.
If there's an error message this time, it'll be because the number is X% LOWER than last time!! :D