Doctor, Doctor... Give Me The News

Weekly weigh-in: 199.3
Loss: -0.2
Total loss: 92.2 lbs.
Emotion: Clean bill of health

It was time… time for my 8-year physical (okay, okay… I need to do better with that, I guess), so there I sat in my doctor’s waiting room trying not to breathe in any H1N1 molecules and glaring at anyone who had the nerve to cough within 25 ft of me.

I whiled away the time by eyeballing the crowded room and performing my own diagnoses on the other unfortunate souls thumbing through their People magazines.

Business dude… sinus infection.

Gameboy kid… sore throat.

Lady with the pantsuit… chronic fatigue syndrome.

Creepy guy in turtleneck… malaria.

Woman with the slutty hairdo… some sort of STD… or possibly a heat rash.

Old guy with big nose… uglyitus.

After 45 minutes of breathing into my armpit, the nurse finally calls my name and I bound past all the sickos.

The nurse grabbed her chart and invites me to hop on the scale. Without a trace of trepidation, I jump on and watch her fiddle with the slider. She writes down 208 on her chart (okay, I was wearing a hoodie and boots), and then whistles to herself.

“Whew,” she says, almost under her breath. “You’ve dropped a bunch of weight.”

“I hadn’t noticed,” I deadpan.

“You hadn’t noticed?” she looks up from the chart and gives me the stink-eye.

She strapped me up to check my blood pressure. 115 over 65.

“You’re normal,” she told me. “Well, your blood pressure is anyway.”

I was disappointed that they didn’t put me on a treadmill, because... frankly... I was gonna rock her world. Instead she just de-shirted me and hooked me up to an EKG machine. The result: “an athlete’s heart rate” is what she told me. That’s what I’m talking about!

The doctor came in and finished up my exam, including the uncomfortable groping and plunging portions of the program (I’m still having bad dreams…). Then we got to talking about the weight loss. He was interested in the why’s and how’s of it all.

During our discussion, I did bring up the subject of what my ideal weight ought to be. He told me that he uses the medically approved “ideal weight” and then adds 20 pounds to it, because that’s “the real world.”

He got out a calculator and figured mine to be 178 + 20 lbs. He checked my chart: “Well, you’re just about there.”

“If your nurses don’t mind weighing a naked dude,” I smiled. “I think I’m there already.”

The nurse just shook her head.

“Did I say normal?”

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