Project Live Forever -- UPDATE
I am just returning from a head-to-toe Mayo Clinic extravaganza (the Executive Health Program). I’ve been poked, prodded, drained, irradiated, magnetized, contrasted, zapped, spun, flashed-at, probed and more.
They tested the blood, they tested the eyes, they tested the nerves, they tested the lungs, heart, organs, etc… I think they even tested the tests (I saw some with poke holes in them being passed around). It is important that your tests are healthy.
The coolest event was probably the MRI (very ‘2001 A space Odyssey directors cut’), followed by the Electromyography (EMG) (everything in the medical field is reduced to acronyms, or EMFRA).
Following that, the EMG was cool since they measured your nerve response with electricity and your limbs are bouncing all over the place (reminds me of sticking my hand on a big capacitor in the TV, but without the smell of searing flesh). The EMG tests progress to this cool needle the doctor jabs into your muscles – over and over again. Ahh, but the needle isn’t stationary, the doctor jiggles it around inside you while crazy lines jump and zap all over the screen. It’s got audio-feedback too, as this speaker makes AM-Radio interference sounds that seem to correspond to the doctors jiggling. It’s way mad-scientist. A cool thing is that a lot of nurses here have cool tattoos. I’d say 35% of them have tat’s – even the good looking ones. I needed lots of neurological consulting if you remember reading about my horrible gymnastics wipe-out of December.
I asked the EMG doctor if the ‘Viking Select’ computer analyzes the data collected, and he said ‘NO’, as this data analysis problem is much more difficult than voice recognition, and the computer does a much worse job than it thinks it does. He said this test hasn’t changed much since the 50’s, except now it’s computerized – way cool: 1950’s crazy electrozapping.
In the endocrinology department, I met with a doctor named Dr. Gates, that looked a lot like Bill Gates, which was cool. I kept doing double-takes. He kept talking and talking and hardly let me get through the list of questions I had brought with me, yet I was charged $540USD for the consult (50 minutes). Crappers! And OHIP doesn’t cover any $$ in May’s Mayo Madness Month extravaganza.
In the cardiovascular department, they had me go on the evil “Treadmill of Everest”. Every 3 minutes this treadmill would get increasingly steeper, and speed up until my heart was patting at a steady 186bpm (very hard core). I kept it up for 13.someodd minutes, which is quite a bit above the average for my age/sex I’m told – whoppie!
Buckets of blood were drawn - a veritable ocean. I had to eat a cookie to keep focused. If you go to the Mayo, make sure you bring a lot of blood with you.
This Mayo I went to is in Jacksonville Florida. Jacksonville is one of the biggest, if not the biggest (in area) city in the USA; however, the density of cool things to do here seems to be very low. I went to the beach. I saw lots of funny lizard creatures scampering about and ant-hills that were so huge that most of my toes could fit in the hole. For some magic reason, no allergies are affecting me here. I did go to the Walmart up the street, as one can learn A LOT about local American culture by watching them go about their day in their Walmarts. It’s like going to the Zoo, but an American Zoo. One woman, featuring 3 teeth, went up to customer service and asked to borrow some glue so she could glue the tooth back into her head -- FOR REAL! Scary stuff kids! Here's a vid of what it's like to live in the Jacksonville Jerry Springer Reality. Here's some thoughts re: Jacksonville. I went to see Episode III on opening night in Jacksonville, and actually got in a fight with a noisy flip-flop shuffilin' overweight monster... er mother of at least three DURING the movie. Creeeeeepy.
Florida, as you know, is full of old people – and this Mayo is even more full of them – and almost all of them are kind of gross-sick in some way. I saw some scary things. In some ways, it makes you happy that you’re pretty healthy, and in others it makes you want to enjoy life to the fullest before you fall apart like them. It is clear to me that modern medicine “experiments on the old” and “practices on the young”.
As I write this in the Neurology lobby (there are some old dudes chatting about what they did during Perl Harbor!), I am reminded that my final meetings are coming up and I’ll be returning to the doctor I started with for a wind-up. Following that, it’s a visit to the dread pirate ‘Financial Representative’ – they save the really bad news for last you see.
PAULSOP.COM SIGNING OUT (oh... and radio should be back up).
