A Hill Too Far

You complete me

We Americans are fond of the idiom "over the hill"--so fond, that we like to capitalize it, throwing Over The Hill parties for thirtieth birthdays. And fortieth and even fiftieth, although most folks have already had that party once by their sixth decade, black balloons and all. The exact location of The Hill is up for grabs in this postmodern age, but, wherever we locate it, none of us is pleased to be Over it. By 62, I thought I'd pretty much traversed all the obvious acclivities and could loll around for a while in It's All Downhill From Here before I had to Bite The Big One.

Yesterday, I learned there's a hill I had never known to dread: the first duet doctor's appointment. Who the hell knew?! And isn't that in violation of the HIPAA regulations or something? As with so many other bizarre affronts in life such as middle school talent show tryouts and childbirth, I was in the middle of it before I knew what had hit me.

When the internist we both see scheduled us for back-to-back appointments, we thought it was sort of...I don't know...sweet? We both like our doctor's staff. Like old people everywhere, we try to treat them personally and entertain them while they are trying to deal with someone on the phone by showing them pictures of our grandchildren, complimenting their new hair color, tattoos, or cheek piercings, etc., so we know they love us and see us as the charming, fit, and youthful couple everyone knows us to be. Certainly, once the schedule had been made, we endorsed it as energy-saving and efficient, a practice like recycling that everyone should adopt if at all possible. So we rode together to the doctor's office, feeling just a little smug and sanctimonious, because WE were carpooling down the length of our own driveway and the whole .45 miles to the doctor's office. A journey of a thousand miles starts with a single step.

I should interrupt myself here to say that I've about had it with togetherness lately. Over the past three years, we've spent half our time in our own average-sized house and the rest cheek-by-jowl in a 650 sq.ft., one bedroom apartment in California; we've driven one borrowed vehicle while there and learned to coordinate our outings; we've signed up for the annual family plan at the gym and usually go at the same time because...well, we were each going, anyway. We are such a Unit, our grandkids call us both PappyGigi. This was not intentional; it just happened.

dvorak.org

It started a few years ago when eye surgery made it hard for me to drive at night because the headlights turned into blinding fireworks, but I swear to you I could still cut my own meat if I ate any. We are not one of those couples who exist in a boundary-free, undifferentiated, co-dependent muddle. Our marriage has certainly not devolved into one of those jostling, one-upmanship sorts of relationships. I'm a whole human all by myself and perfectly at ease with full individuation. And I'm starting to need my own space in a way that might involve one of those Freddie Kreuger gloves.

My appointment was first by fifteen minutes, (I won) so I was a little taken aback when the nurse stuck her head out and called, "M_______s!" Plural. Not Mrs. M_____ or Mr.M ______. Did she mean both of us? She did.

We each stepped up on the scales in turn (he'd lost five, I'd lost two, so he won), had our respective blood pressures taken by the brusque nurse (my diastolic was lower, so I won), and found ourselves sitting side-by-side in the examining room, waiting for the doctor like you'd wait for Your Featured Presentation at the movies. At least we got to sit in narrow chairs and weren't left nudging each other for butt space with our four legs dangling off the exam table, playing King of The Hill. It was starting to feel distinctly surreal in there. And crowded.

You know how long those waits are. By the time Dr. W, a gentle, thorough, soft-voiced woman from Bangladesh of whom we are both fond, came in, I'd begun to imagine things. I'd gotten pretty far with my scenarios...all the way to: she's going to announce that one of us has requested a sex-change operation and she likes to have couples discuss these things with her ahead of time. What do you say at a time like that? After trying on several broadminded responses, my mind had flitted back to the Freddie Kreuger gloves when the door opened.

It was a perfectly normal visit. Almost an anticlimax, really. She checked my blood pressure again herself to follow up on that low diastolic number, but, naturally by that time both my numbers were high. She put that down to "white coat syndrome." I thought I should bring up the heart palpitations I'd begun experiencing quite recently--just minutes ago, in fact. She gave us each the same amount of time, obviously careful not to indicate that one of us had been the better patient. She went over our blood work, ordered a routine mammogram for one of us and discussed WNL PSA numbers for the other--your usual His and Hers check-up. It was all just too unorthodox to take in, and I think I can speak for both of us when I say there was just a whiff of favoritism to it. You know how you can always tell these things no matter how hard they try to cover it up.

We walked out still a little disoriented, and, in tandem knee-jerk fashion, agreed when the woman at the desk offered us back-to-back appointments next time. When I am amazed, I just don't think that well on my feet. All the short way home, we talked about why Dr. W. had done our exams that way and all we could conclude was that she makes that a usual practice with married couples of a certain age if they seem amenable to it...

because, at 62 and 65, she knows they've pierced the leading boundary of The Dementia Zone. 

In fact, I think she suspects one of us. Probably the flakier one.