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Carol Perkins: Advice for Husband & Wife medical exams


After misadventures in visit to specialist in Louisville, Carol concludes what she needs is a panacea for anything . . . but that's the moral of this story. Click on headline to read it all - but no peaking, please.
Next earlier Carol Perkins column: Carol Perkins: Planning a funeral - tiny detail, big difference

By Carol Perkins

I scheduled an appointment in Louisville with a specialist renown for dealing effectively with blood pressure and heart conditions to make sure Guy and I were going to live a little longer.

Actually, I wanted a second opinion that we were, indeed, both healthy. Guy has blood pressure issues, and I have periods of shortness of breath and palpitations.



We were both put through a series of tests with our regular doctors and passed. However, I wasn't content with his sack of pills, feeling that six per night for blood pressure was a little excessive. I also worried about his heart rate being in the fifties. I made the appointment for his sake.

He assured me he wasn't going. I told him that if he would go, I would get a second opinion about my shortness of breath. Not wanting me to fall over with a heart attack, which he has been telling me was going to happen if I didn't see about myself, he agreed to go. Then he backed out. "I don't need to go."

"I'm not going if you aren't going."

"But you NEED to go; I don't."

"What about the fact you complain your head feels like it is going to explode?"

"That's just sinus." So until an hour before time to leave, we were still dancing. Finally, he caved.

A husband and wife should never go into an examination room together.

I have known this doctor for years because I have been taking my mother to him. He looked at me and said, "You first." He already had my records, so it didn't take long for him to tell me that my shortness of breath, my knee problems, and other problems with overweight people would go away when the weight did.

"Her main problem is breathing. She can't walk across the room without losing her breath," Guy said. He asked Guy if I snored. I answered, "Like a freight train." I told him about the CPAC machine, etc. What he said next to me made Guy want to fall to the floor in hysterics, "You are short, and you have no neck, so air has trouble getting into your air passages." I didn't listen to the rest. I have NO NECK? I used to have a neck. I now have two chins and no neck?

Then he turned to Guy. When the doctor asked him if he felt dizzy, Guy said, "Sometimes." I chimed in, "Every time he gets up he feels dizzy."

"What is going on inside your head?" the doctor asked.

"Well, I think it is sinus," Guy replied.

"It isn't sinus. You don't have sinus problems for two years every single day," I said.

"Two years?" the doctor said.

"Yes, at least that long."

By then, the doctor asked a question and looked at both of us for an answer.

He told Guy not to bring home any candy, and that if he wanted to help, he could buy me a chair bike. It fits under a desk or in front of a chair. I wasn't listening because I was still thinking about having no neck. How long has everyone else known I have no neck? Guy confessed he knew it; he also said that I used to have one. Were my friends saying, "Poor No-Neck Carol."

He sent us to the front desk to pick up a lab order for Guy to take to a local lab for some blood work to see what might be causing the pressure in his head. I thought he was looking at me when he said, "And order her a stress test and an echo." A sinking feeling weakened my knees. When the nurse didn't give me an order, I said, "Am I supposed to have some tests, too?" She looked at me puzzled.

"Didn't he just say for me to have a stress test and an echo?"

"Not you," she said, "the lady behind you." I turned around and she smiled.

It was time to head back to Edmonton.
(My new book, A Girl Named Connie, is available at Blossoms Florist and Boutique Unique, 507 Happy Valley Road, Glasgow, KY 42141, Phone 270-629-3597; the Edmonton/Metcalfe Chamber of Commerce, 109 E Stockton Street, Edmonton, KY, Phone 270-432-3222; and the Lighthouse Restaurant, 1500 Sulphur Well/Knob Lick Road, Sulphur Well Historic District, KY 42129. Phone 270-629-3597. And Also on Amazon.com)

Contact: Carol Perkins, PO Box 134, Edmonton, KY 42129. Phone 670-432-5756. carolperkins06@gmail.com


This story was posted on 2017-01-25 06:26:28
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