Be Your Own Doctor!

Back several months ago, I made a small discovery. If you're a real crum about it and get ugly, you can get your blood test results sent directly to you. I found this out when I was sure Smokin' Dr Javier had set me up for a thyroid test I neither needed nor wanted nor was willing to pay for. "Send me those results!" I cried as I pounded my fist on the desk. This was of course in the privacy of my office, for I'd never pound my fist on the desk in front of people.

And so I got my test results. And it was cool, because when they print those things out it has not only what you "scored" on your tests, but what the optimum "grade" for the test is. Which maybe isn't so cool, because they're supposed to be sent to doctors who, for some strange reason or other, are supposed to know what the "optimum" grades are.

Back a couple of months ago when I had to visit the new doctor, the friendly "your ideal weight is 110 pounds" doctor, he sent me for a barrage of blood tests. I finally had that done a few weeks ago. And for some strange reason I was expecting a call from him, or at least one of his minions, telling me how I did. ("Did I get into Healthy Person's School? Did I, did I?")

But that call never came. And I let it go for a while, thinking I must be OK if no one was knocking at my door with a wreath. But you know me; I can't let things go for too long a time.

So I called the friendly "y.i.w.i.110p." doctor and mentioned I'd had all these tests done and I was wondering if I was going to live long enough to pay off the cost of having them. And the office person said, "What's your address, we'll send them to you."

And in a few days, lo and behold, I was holding my test results.

And it was fun, reading about my blood. I've always thought I had interesting blood, simply because it never wants to come out of my body and lab techs the world over have to pound and pinch and poke (and poke and poke) and sometimes use strange gadgets to get it out. And on a few occasions, they've even had to resort to sticking me in places like the back of my hand to get a sample. It's lovely blood though, and flows well when it finally decides to leave my body.

But maybe my blood's not as interesting as I thought, for just about every little thing they tested me for came up normal. And they tested for a lot. In fact, they tested for about $800 worth of stuff.

Let's see, white blood count, red blood count, platelet count, all OK. Iron, thyroid (couldn't escape this one), glucose, protein, creatine, nitrogen, potassium, sodum, all OK. All the initial things, that would be your ALP, AST, ALT, MPV (isn't that a car? I have a car in me?), MCV, MCH, MCHC, RDW, and a hundred more, all OK.

Only one thing didn't fall within the norms. That was my B12. It was high. By over 200 points. Which begs the question, if I'm so damn brimming with B12, why the hell ain't I brimming with energy? Sadly, the papers don't tell me that. I guess I'll have to figure that one out on my own.

I'm thinking everything medical should work like this. Have a regular Medical Automat. You sit down and a machine takes your blood, or makes you breathe into it, or cuts a strand of your hair for DNA. Then in 4-6 weeks you get a paper showing all the results. Then you can decide what to do with the information. If you decide you need blood pressure medicine, or cholesterol lowering pills, then just go to the vending machine and get some.

Cut out the middleman, I say! Be your own doctor!

Sure, some people might die, but we're an overcrowded planet anyway.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* We have acrowinners, as judged by the dishy Michelle. So, who thought what of summers past? I'll turn it over to Mitchie and she can tell us:
"Well, now this is better. I tried to judge a weee bit early and there was but ONE entry. Now I see that two more brave souls have taken the challenge. These are all so juicy and so many remind me of my own memories - for example, Flipsy's "Ryan gave Veronica tongue. A solid romance" really took me down memory lane, even though my name isn't Veronica, and I've never known a Ryan.
*So, runner up is Flipsy's " Running, gone. Victorious tag ! Aww, streetlights! Redo! " Now, I never remember having to redo a game of tag because of street lights, but back in the day I lived in the woods. Maybe tag was different in the city?
*Special Mention to Lily's " Renovating "Gay". Very teenaged Air & Space researcher" I'm not sure I even really get this, I just think it has a nice ring to it.
*And the winner.... it's Betster!: " Reveling gaily, virginal, traipsing and singing rhymes." Now we all know Bet, that was a long, long time ago! You have a great memory!
Thank you ALL for playing!"
*Wow! What an honor!