Growing Gills on Gitchiegoomie

It gives me great pains to report to you, my hard core fans of the "Lost In The Woods" that I have had to demote my personal physician.  Remember I told you how she's a rock star for saving my life yet again last week?  Well.  She is a little bit less of a rock start now than she was.  She totally healed me ... made me well back then ... or so I thought.  Turned out to be a teaser.  Antibiotics.  Good advice.  Bingo-bango I was over the hacking and coughing and back on the way to health.

But ... ahhhh ... no.  The day before I left town for Michigan, (where I am penning this statement of shock and concern,) I had to call her up and tell her I was coughing up my knee caps again.  I didn't actually SPEAK to her.  I spoke to a nurse.  But the nurse was speaking to her and we were conversing through this angel of mercy.  (Side note ... always speak nicely about nurses.  They handle the needles.)  So the nurse was telling her how I was feeling and the doctor was telling her to tell me that she will prescribe more miracle drugs and I should be good as new in 6 weeks.  Great.  "Take the pills and it will still take 6 weeks to run its course."  That's what she said.  So I employed my great wit and said, "So I will survive?"  The doctor replied, "You aren't going to die!  Not this time.  You will someday though."  I heard her.  She just lay it out there.  Then she laughed.  And then they were gone and I was left holding the phone wondering ...

What just happened?

My rock star doctor just told me that I'm going to die.  Someday.  Can we think that through for a minute?

She doesn't know what I'll be sick with.

She doesn't know when the sickness will strike.

She doesn't know what medical advances will be made between now and then.

And yet she's already writing me off?  Are you serious?  Is this the kind of doctor YOU want?  I don't.  NO way.  NO sir.  I want a doctor that says, "Heck yeah, we are going to beat this thing!  I am a rock star doctor and you can count on me!  No way I'm going to let the cruel fingers of death wrap their bony fingers around your neck!  You can count on me, Ron-o!"

I don't even have the illness yet and she's already thrown in the towel, wrapped my carcass in it, and lowered me into a chilly hole in the ground.  How do you say U~N~A~C~C~E~P~T~A~L~E.

And so here I sit.  800 miles from home. Antibiotics in my backpack.  Cough syrup (with sweet codeine!) by my bed stand.  An inhaler in my pocket. My bride looks at me with that "come hither" stare and I blow a lung in response.  And my doctor is already preparing my death certificate.

I have eaten 4 meals in the two days since arriving here on the southern edge of the lake the indians call "Gitchigoomie."    4 consecutive meals of freshly murdered white fish just pulled kicking and screaming from Lake Superior.  I am growing gills.  When I burp I taste fish.  And somewhere in St. Louis I wonder if there sits a woman.  A doctor.  She leans over my chart late on this night and she cackles ... waiting ... knowing the hook has been set ... the tug has come on the line ... and soon she'll reel me in.  That cold dead "carp stare" will be in my eyes.  And when she burps she will taste ...

I miss Dr. Buttfeel.