Trouble in the weighting room

My doctor is having a phone survey taken to find out how better to serve his patients. I think he’s wondering why I only show up once every 15 months.

I like my doctor. We’ve known each other for several years, and by and large I’m happy with the way things have gone. I’m still here, after all. But yes, I do have a suggestion.

Every time I go to his office the first thing I’m asked to do is get on the scale, and every time I get up there I weigh seven pounds more than I thought I did.

If the medical profession wants to know why we don’t come by as often as they’d like, they should think about that.

Why hustle to a place that makes us feel like avocadoes before we even get examined? Who needs a fanatically accurate scale?

Patti Jo knows a woman who refuses to get weighed at the doctor’s anymore because she’s tired of hearing the assistant who balances the scale say “Wow.”

It doesn’t have to be that way. If I may illustrate:

My vision is blurring gradually. Patti Jo has remarked that as couples get older, they can’t see each other as well, which is nature’s way of keeping them together.

Now, in our house, we have a friendly, or poorly lit, mirror and an unfriendly, or well-lit, mirror. The friendly mirror shows me as I look in my heart. It reminds me of the day somebody said I looked like Michael Douglas. I gravitate to the friendly mirror.

But the other day I had my glasses on and accidentally caught myself in the unfriendly mirror. It didn’t make me think of Michael Douglas; it made me think of Edward Everett Horton. If you can’t picture him, I’ll help you: He was the elderly character actor who set the Hollywood record for number of wrinkles under his lower lip. If he comes to mind when you see your reflection, you might as well go sit down by the window with a shawl on your lap.

It’s going to be awhile before I step up to that mirror again.

So my suggestion, to my doctor and his office personnel, is this: Get a scale that weighs out seven pounds lighter than the one you’ve got.

And before you get your smock in a wad about Hippocrates and irresponsibility, I’m not saying you should juggle the numbers on my white-cell count, or ignore my prostate, lungs or liver. The big stuff has to be dealt with head-on.

What I’m saying is that in a medical office, where the climate is always one of suppressed anxiety anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to come up with a few pounds’ worth of good news.

You call it lying? I call it saving lives. Patients will come more often to an doctor with a friendly scale, so you have that much more chance to catch the really big diseases before they do any damage. Think it over: Seven pounds.

You’ll be turning them away.cpt-kiraly-cmyk-CPhotoInfoRN1P07CK20060317hrimoxkf(LA)