Doctor-doctor, tell me the news

My appointment was at 2:15. I paced nervously for an hour before showering and getting dressed. I put my wide-band bracelet watch on and realized it weighs six and a half ounces, and the turquoise earrings which complemented my outfit weighed as much as the loaded omelet I ate for breakfast. Removed the watch, the earrings, slipped into barely-there flats, changed from my heavy weight black capris to my lightweight ones. Considered cutting a couple inches off my thick wooly mane, and then said, to heck with it. The face cream didn't erase a thing except a few bucks from my wallet. The lipstick didn't enhance my appearance, and no amount of suck-in-the-gut paraphanelia ever matters when the nurse says, "Disrobe."

So off I went for my annual physical, worried about my weight and blood pressure. All that junk food.The wedding cake, funeral food, birthday brownies, graduation cupcakes, and crappy lunches that I've eaten this past month! I originally referred to them as stress reducers. Stress enhancers they were as I pressed the elevator button.

Two weeks ago I ran out of my bone loss meds. My aunts all have dowager humps from osteoporosis. I just knew the doc would say that my back bones were collpapsing upon themselves after just two weeks of not taking my Fosomax.

The child-nurse weighed and measured me. The scale didn't scream, but I moaned a bit at the three pound increase. Next, I did what the kid-nurse said. I stood erect against the wall.

"Five feet, five and half inches."
"No, I've been 5'5" my entire adult life."

"NO, you are five-feet-five-and-a-half inches!"
"Last year this little liar said I was five feet four and half inches." (A full year I worried that I was shrinking!)

Baby face never cracked a smile, "It says 5 feet 5 and a half."
I didn't care for the brat-nurse. I do like my stick-thin doctor and all of the photos of her and her biking team, those runty looking medical professionals. My doctor is nice, understanding, doesn't talk endlessly, and she doesn't harp when she gets her point across.

"Been exercising?"
"Been a bad winter, no, I cocooned all winter."

"It's not winter anymore."
"Yeah, and I feel like dancing!"

"Why don't you just try walking?"
"I've been lifting hand weights."

"How often?"
"Morning and at night."

"Good, any questions or concerns?"
"Yes, why do the veins in my right upper arm look more prominent than the left arm?"

"Chest pains? Short winded?"
"No, and never :)"

"Right handed?"
"Yes."

"Been lifting weights?"
"Yes."

"Anything else?"
"I ran out of my osteporosis medicine two weeks ago."

"That's fine. I'm going to take you off of it for a while."
"WHY, because the Fosomax worked and I've grown an inch since last year?"

She looks up from the computer and stares at me like I may be a section eight case.
"No, because you've been on it five years, so in six months, we'll do a bone scan and see if the results warrant a new prescription."

My mind was racing, trying to process what she said. I could feel my neck bending, my vertebrae collapsing, my Dowager's hump forming ... and now she has a WARRANT for my WHAT?

"Look at my records. Last year I was five-four-and-a-half, and your little nurse tells me today that I'm five-five-and-a-half."

"Like that thing can't be wrong? Let me take your blood pressure. 112 over 76. Very good."
"GOOD?! When your nurse took it upon my arrival, it was 120 over 80. My blood pressure is going down; my height is going up. Are you sure I'm okay?"

She laughed, jotted notes, antecdotal, I'm certain. Then, she said, "In six months you're due for a tetanus shot, so why don't we give it now, the one with pertussis vaccine?"
Before I could put her off, she put that needle right into my muscular (okay, still flabby upper arm).

Yeah, my doc knows how to make a point alright!