Do I Think I'm What?

By Roy Exum · Friday, February 3, 2012

It is customary that when you are visiting a new doctor, the nurse or an assistant sits down with you at first to go over the answers you have provided on the "patient information" forms. They ask you things like if you have heart problems, asthma, or diphtheria – even though you've checked "no" already -- and go over any medications you are already taking.

But the other day, tucked in somewhere between the old standards like cholesterol and ringworm, I got hit with a brand new one that wasn't on the form I had just filled out as correctly as I could. The nurse said in a matter-of-fact way, "Let me ask you something ... do you think you are white?"

Now you need to understand. I was there about a cyst that has most unfortunately appeared in my lower spine and still has my sciatica nerves all jumpy. I wasn't about to get kicked off any quiz show for a wrong answer but it caused me to pause before I made a bit of a funny face and replied, "Yeah, I do ... what do you think?"

The nurse smiled, shaking her head as though to wave it off, and I wasn't about to bring it up again because I was in search of a more pressing cure. But before I went to sleep much later that night, the question gave me another pause. I don't believe a question like that has much to do with anything.

It wasn't hard to answer and goodness knows I wasn't upset by it but in the tender corner of my heart I can see how some might get their feelings hurt and be somewhat offended. Oh, I'm for telling just about anything if it will get me out of life's valley and back on the mountain. I'm very eager to attack the root of illness, stamp that sucker flat and move on to big stuff as quickly as possible.

All a delay in any cure means is that my problem will hurt a little longer and when you've been some of the places I have you learn that any level of pain is bad for you. No doctor or hospital I've ever seen gives a chest full of medals to patients for enduring pain and I'm not going to bear it any longer than I absolutely must. Then again, I can see how asking a young teenaged girl if she thinks she's Asian or a shy foreign-exchange student if he thinks he is black could put a bit of a dent in their understandably sensitive bumper.

Maybe the nurse doesn't ask but certain patients who happen to look weird or perhaps it is a sly trick to see if people like me listen as closely as we should. The cynic in me suspects there is more to it than that. What if it was part of a medical-school survey to see how many of us actually "think" we are what we appear to be?

Or what if it was a psychiatric study to learn how many patients with back problems, and the pain associated with such maladies, have unwittingly curved their perceptions of reality to the point where we now "think" we are really Eskimos, Pacific Islanders or Australian Aborigines? After the last six weeks, I can easily see it happening. Back pain, I'm telling you, is a terrible thing.

More realistically, I suspect the question is part of the worst plague in modern medicine – another piece of paper in a ridiculous web of ever-increasing government mandated paper work that is choking the efficiency of doctors and hospitals across the nation. I am appalled by the forms thrust upon a sick person entering the hospital.

My goodness, I'll sign anything and promise to paint your house. And you wouldn't believe mess that happens if your far-away child calls the hospital to slyly check on dear ol' dad and the HIPPA police get called in on the case. Talk about revision forms, copies and initial here.

Some day when we get the ox out of the ditch I'm going to find out what's behind the question, "Do you think you are white?" I ain't about to get involved right now because I've got too much at stake and what seems to be an easy route to blessed relief. Still, something inside me wants to know.

It's true. I wonder more and more about who comes up with this stuff and what it would take to get them some professional help in coping with today's society. Maybe these people could help monitor surveillance cameras or count cash on Wall Street. I don't want to hurt anybody but it's clear to me it was a dumb question and, if you let it go ignored, I "think" the stupids may soon be catching up on those of us who "think" we've still got a pretty good grip on the rope.

royexum@aol.com

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