Return to the Abominable Doctor......

When I walk into his office, the Abominable Doctor Panagas is juggling scalpels. "Alo Meester Dough-Nahld Wall-tone" he says while making a behind the back catch. "Go een-to my lair, I mean my ex-ham-ee-nah-shone rum and seat on dee tah-bull." I do as instructed. He is armed after all. "Ah, dees one has to go" he says while poking at a spot above my left eye. "Lye beck and get come-for-ah-tah-bull."

Getting comfortable on an examination table is not really within the range of human possibility; especially when an MD of the slice and dice variety is hovering above you with a maniacal gleam in his eye. That's right, eye. Just the one. The other is pondering something distant, calculating perhaps, the sum to be billed. Nevertheless, I give it my best shot.

I always hate the next part because the first thing Panagas does is to cover my eyes with some kind of cloth. This is, I think, his way of ruling out my jumping up and saying "No way Jack, we're not doing that!" He then pulls a bright lamp over and I can tell that, because the cloth lights up and I have to shut my eyes. Chuckling quietly to himself, he proceeds. First there is the needle. He jabs that in three or four places around the offending area ostensibly to kill future pain. Current pain, that is the pain caused BY the needle itself, seems to be irrelevant. Well, to him anyway. After that comes the slicing and scraping and stitching, some of which does hurt, but when I scrunch up and make a through the teeth hissing sound, the doctor only pauses long enough to say "Duele?" (pain?)and I idiotically man-up and respond "solo un poco" which I think means only a little, but I know gets interpreted as "carry on I can handle it."

Fifteen or twenty minutes later I get to sit up on the side of the examination table and feel a big fat bandage. Yup, there's something new under there, but I won't get to see it for a couple of days. El Doak-tore then writes a number on a sheet from a sticky pad, tells me to come back in a week and I say gracias and leave to pay his Waiting Room Secretary Girl. When I glance at her and her big smile, I feel better. When I glance at the number on the sticky pad sheet I feel worse. (There is no shot to relieve this pain.) As I pull the twenties one after the other from my clip, I have to wonder... Why am I the one saying thank-you?