She took my left hand in both of hers and held it warmly for a moment squeezing it tightly twice. Then she stroked it carefully, gently, tenderly. She looked up at me, still holding my hand and opened her mouth.
“It’s gout.” She said softly.
“Gout?” I responded incredulously, “I thought that was for feet!”
“It can occur in any joint, I will write you a prescription for medication that you can begin tomorrow.” She made a note or two then stood up to leave.
“Wait a minute – how can you be sure?” I asked.
“Well, we will do a blood test to confirm the uric acid levels and then proceed with the treatment.” She opened the door and left. She had been in the exam room for three and one-half minutes.
So. I went to the lab where two immensely obese young women padded and wobbled about like great bubbles of fat that softly and slowly bounced across the floor. One of them reeked of stale cigarette smoke. I had the blood test and went home. They would call me in thirty minutes and I could go to Walgreens and pick up my medication.
The next afternoon one of the young women at the office called. “Your uric acid levels are completely normal.”
“What does that mean?”
“You don’t have gout.”
“What do I have?”
“Oh, I don’t know.” There was a pause on the other end. “But your medication has been cancelled so don’t go by to try to get it.”
“I didn’t want it anyway.” I responded. “So what should I actually do?”
“Just continue with the medication you were already taking.”
“I wasn’t taking any medication.”
“Then just use the ointment you were using before.”
“I wasn’t using any ointment.”
After a long silence the voice returned, now with a slight aura of irritation, “Well, I guess then that I will have to go back and check with the doctor and we will call you tomorrow! You will probably have to come back for another examination.”
“No, don’t bother. She obviously has more important things to do.” I hung up.
The hand already felt better. I had gone to the doctor because I thought I might have broken the thumb out in the garden the day before, and the whole arm was red and swollen, and I expected x-rays would be taken at the very least. I also knew that her bill for just her 3.5 minute experience would probably be about $145 and that Medicare would probably approve about $48 or 1/3 of the charge. Well, that’s OK, I figured, I probably got about 1/3 of a diagonosis.
I reflected back on the visit now, and about how it seemed to fit pretty well into what I have started to call my encounter with "The Flash Card Generation". That’s seems to be where I have arrived in my life, and going to the doctor is a perfect example. The doctor comes in and stares at me like a child waiting for a new flash card. I get the feeling that my "flash card" says maybe something like, “2 + 2”. The doctor quickly says “four” and writes a prescription, gets up and leaves, and the great computer will send me a bill. I go back another time and apparently show “C - A - T“. The doctor says “cat” and writes a prescription, walks out, and the bill will come later. Maybe I go in with something different, like “A - I - L - E - Y - F - A - Y - N - T”. The doctor may look puzzled and then write out a prescription as he quietly says to himself “elephant?”. Or if I go in with a”card” that reads something like “43.78÷12.3 to the 4th power X 12.732 “, I will get an appointment with a Specialist.
Fortunately, the human body is a wonderful creation capable of correcting many of its own problems. So, as long as the doctor doesn’t do too much damage, it will probably return to its state of normalcy in a couple of weeks. Obviously, serious illness or injury are very different matters, and I suspect most doctors really enjoy bringing about an important healing. But most of the things they deal with are really kind of strange, most of the people who come to see a doctor feel strange just being there. And the examination rooms are very strange too, so it figures that the doctors would have to be kind of strange in order to exist in this strange world, and they have large bills to pay, high costs of operation, insurance, and other overhead, so they have to make their time really add up. Perhaps they suffer more than the rest of us do, and probably have developed their own coping strategies. My take on the matter is that the doctor takes a quick look at your record before entering the exam room. One item which apparently stands out is whether or not you are covered by Medicare. If you are a Medicare recipient, then when the doctor comes in the room his mind is already elsewhere. He may shake your hand he but will be looking for your flash card.
New worlds were created and tossed whirling around all over the place. It was a mess. People screamed and shouted, they leaped to their feet! But sadly it was no use. Large numbers of those attending were captured, apparently they endured much suffering as they writhed and tried to wiggle and squirm away. Ah, it was indeed a sight probably not intended for human eyes to view. The only way to survive was to relax, close your eyes, abandon your feet to their own spasmodic reflexes and let the sounds grab you from your seat and take you away to places you did not know even existed!
The hand already felt better. I had gone to the doctor because I thought I might have broken the thumb out in the garden the day before, and the whole arm was red and swollen, and I expected x-rays would be taken at the very least. I also knew that her bill for just her 3.5 minute experience would probably be about $145 and that Medicare would probably approve about $48 or 1/3 of the charge. Well, that’s OK, I figured, I probably got about 1/3 of a diagonosis.
These two artists joined together to light the candle of wonder again in Hickory last night Actually, they set the stage for a couple of stunning performances. One by a High School student, Katya Bengston, who opened the door for the evening, with her poem that set the bar extremely high for those who followed. Then came the virtuoso work of Alyn Mearns who interpreted Chopin’s mazurkas on his acoustic guitar and escorted patrons of the show along with him into a slightly different dimension.
The other high school students, led by their instructor, Molly Rice, presented professional performances of their own original poetry written in response to the pictures of the exhibition. Finally, Adrian Rice, Writer-in-Residence of Cataba Valley Community College, and now associate professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University, both in Hickory, read from his published work in “Hickory Haiku” interspersed with observations of some of the differences he notices between the United States and Ireland, such as our “wonderful” weather and our beautiful skies that we don’t have to keep lifting up as we walk beneath them, and of course, our militant robins, huge birds that are apparently much larger than their Irish counterparts, along with many, many other amazing and delightful differences. 
David Moore, professor of archaeology at Warren Wilson College in Black Mountain, NC, came to Hickory March 23, 2011, to talk about the excavation in progress at Joara (ge WAR ruh), which is near Hickory.
Intensely reflective
He dives deeply into the depths of life and discovers new horizons down there then rises swiftly, bubbling up beyond the surface into a world which didn’t exist until just now. The old world cascades off of his new vision like water leaving the prow of a kayak which is headed somewhere else. Spirituality can finally shed the anchors and drag lines of religion and become something no prophet ever dreamed of.
Charlie Cox ran with scissors tonight in the Fireman’s Kitchen and everybody had a blast. 
Catawba Science Center explored the "Science of Dreams" during a Science Café Program at Crescent Moon Café in downtown Hickory. Dr. Gordon Cappelletty, Jungian-trained psychotherapist and adjunct professor at Lenoir-Rhyne University, presented a discussion of the changes our brain goes through when we sleep and how that helps us develop into that creature we will call our "self". 
A meeting with Elliott Engel is like a trip to another planet in that you learn all kinds of things you didn’t even know you didn’t know, and how important they are. Like - the fact that fairy tales have all kinds of beings in them such as trolls and dragons and monsters and so on BUT there is ONE being that is NEVER found in a fairy tale - what is that one being? Professor Engel then proceeds to tell his stunned audience what it is, and explains WHY that is so, and then he is off and running , and we are off and running with him. (I have to use a lot of capital letters because that is the way Dr. Engel often talks.) 
Professor Engel is the consummate teacher. He teaches “around” the subject - and quickly too - so that by the time he is about ready to tell us what IT is, we are hoping up and down in our seats, mentally “shouting” what we think the answer is at him. He has been doing this for a long time and he has picked up a few copycats lately - one I notice that is doing his type of teaching is "WordWorld". They do the same type of thing for our young granddaughters and they probably got it from Dr. Engel. (He’s been doing it a LOT longer!)
Even the moon was curious, shining in through the window of Taste Full Beans, trying to peep under Ted Pope’s cap brim. It came from the other side of the sky just like Ted did, and the moon wasn’t even supposed to be up then - and Ted wasn’t even supposed to be here then - but that was then. And last night was now.
He attracts creatures from the night, other people who come in and regale us and shout at us, and throw money at us and then leave. Fortunately we had stabilizing influences at Taste Full Beans last night. Tim Peeler was there, a real calming influence, and a posse from Linconton brought order and sanity to the place so we could all go home - rattled a bit, but still coherent.
