“This is a tough room.” – Arthur Bach

The doctor’s examination room is the worst place in the world.  It is here, in this chilly, stark 8 x 12 foot box, that I come face to face with my own mortality and loathe the imperfect mechanized nature of the brittle human body.  Time for my bi-annual physical.

The environment is cold and the color scheme, selected no doubt for its’ clinically tested calming affect on gullible minds, is painfully neutral and lifeless. The fung shui of the room provides an experience designed to suck the joy of living right out of my carcass.  Ironically, the same space simultaneously houses the tools and information to help extend my body’s limited warranty.  My muscles tighten from the cold, or is it premature rigor?

The muffled sound of voices coming from the other cells helps shift focus onto someone else’s condition, which I am sure is more dire than my own.  That cheers me momentarily.  Then I remember that red spot on my right shoulder.  Probably nothing, but I should mention it.  

The medical announcements on the wall for smoking cessation and proper form completion to insure accurate billing and payment are blunt and unyielding.  I begin to hope that the doctor’s demeanor, once he finally arrives to distract me from my wallowing in self-pity and imaginary aches, is warm, his touch filled with confidence.  His first task will be to undo all of the damage done to me by the room.  That task would be easier if I knew that I could remain fully clothed for the entire exam. 

There are contradictions aplenty here in Room #3.  You can enjoy some light reading on the healthy functioning of the atria, ventricles, and interventricular septum, reading that increases the pounding of my pulse on my eardrums.  If it’s your outside that needs work, peruse this week’s Top Ten beauty secrets to eliminate crow’s feet forever, in a germ-infested, dog-eared copy of Glamour (if crow’s feet were renamed to something more pleasant, do you think we’d tolerate them more?  How about “Love Creases’?  “Genius Lines”?).  I relax as I stare at the gray flip top trash receptacle and wonder, ‘What the hell could be in there???”   That thing is a bacteria trap, literally.   I think I’ll hold my breath for a couple more minutes, just in case.

We’ll all die sometime, but in the doctor’s exam room, do you have to rub my face in it?