Questions

A while back, I went to town with my pants on backwards.  I didn’t realize they were on backwards until I started in the door of the store and tried to put my phone in my pocket, which, instead of being in the front was mysteriously in the back.  “Oh well,” I thought, “maybe no one will notice.”

Not long after that trip, I had a doctor’s appointment for my yearly “medicare checkup.”  I don’t know when they started this tradition, but I do know that they will drive you crazy calling you to ask you to set up this date until you finally say yes.  As far as I can tell, the only difference between a medicare checkup and any other checkup are the number of questions they ask.  Even before you get there, they call you and ask a long list of questions – things like how many times you have fallen in the last year, if you have had any feelings of despair lately, and if you are able to do your own housework.  I never know exactly how to answer those kinds of questions.  When they say “fallen,” do they mean just random falls, like when you are just walking along and you fall down?   Or do they mean when you fall off the horse, or the dog trips you, or the leg of the chair  you are sitting in breaks and you and the chair end up on the ground?  Because those are falls that have a reason.  As for despair, I have those feelings every time I try to light the pilot light on my gas logs, or untangle all those cords in the back of my television, or find the hammer that I know I just used last week but can’t remember where I last saw it.  Is that the kind of despair they want to know about?  As far as my housework is concerned, I’m able to do most of it; I just don’t want to do any of it.  That’s why my house looks like it does.

Then when you get to the clinic, they hand you another round of questions to answer.  These questions are multiple choice, but the choices don’t ever fit.  For instance, “how many times do you drink?”  Well, it depends.  I might have two drinks in one week, but then I don’t have any drinks for the next three weeks.  They want you to say you have one a week or 2 a week or several a week.  I might have several one week but I don’t have several every week.  They need a choice that says “Other.”  This questionnaire asks again about feeling despair but I just say no because there is no place to explain about the lost hammer, the pilot light, or the cords behind the TV. 

Then when you get in the exam room, there is another set of questions.  The nurse asked if I live alone.  “I guess you mean other humans,” I said.  Because when you have four large dogs, you are never alone.  Not at the table, not on the couch, not in the bathroom (if you aren’t quick enough at closing the door), not in the bedroom, nowhere are you ever alone.

Then it’s time for the test.  The nurse gives you three words to remember and asks you to draw a clock face and set the hands at 11:10.  The three words are not usually that hard – I just make up a little story using the words, and I can still tell time.  But they are going to have to come up with a different test someday because I don’t think they even teach kids how to tell time with a regular clock nowadays.  There was a third question, but I don’t remember what it was.  One of my friends says that she drills her parents on how to answer the questions on the way to their doctor’s appointment, asking them who the president is, what year it is, and making sure they remember their name and birthdate.  Since I drive myself to the doctor, I don’t have anyone to help me practice.  The dogs don’t know any questions to ask other than, “Are you going to eat all that sandwich?”  Or, “Are you leaving again and when will you be back?”

I wonder what they do with the questions and answers after you leave?  Are they saved and recorded somewhere so that somewhere down the line, they can refer back to see if you had two drinks in 2024 or how many times you fell in 2023?  How many times do you have to fall before they become alarmed?  What if you miss a word on the test or forget which is the long hand and which is the short hand on a clock?  And what about the questions they don’t ask?  Like, how many names do you have to go through before you get the right name for the dog that is chasing the cat?  Or, how long did it take you to get up off the ground when the chair collapsed with you in it?  Or who was that woman in the store that you had a long conversation with even though you have no idea who she was or how you knew each other?  Or what was the name of that poem about the old house on the side of the road that you memorized long ago?  Or, did you ever find your hammer and get the pilot light lit?  They didn’t even ask me if I have ever gone to town with my pants on backwards.