My Fears

Sweet Jesus, she shaved my chest. I never, in my entire life, thought that this would happen. But she shaved my chest and now not only am I having heart palpatations from the anxiety, but I look like a knob.

There isn't much in this world that scares me. My wife once commented that she didn't think I was afraid of anything. To a point, she was right. Atleast phsycially.

It's not that I don't have the common fears that most people do. It's just that for some reason I have been able to work through them. My wife has heard some of my work stories where I have had to enter a crack house or a meth lab and I was joking about it later.

But my wife wasn't looking at the whole picture. There is more to the Hossman than just these tree trunk arms. Not alot of the phsyical stuff has really scared me. But it's the other side, the mindfuck side that I can't deal with.

I am afraid of two things, short of the horrors of war and those things. I'll admit, I don't know if I really want to write this as everyone will know and I'm sure I'll get some ripping in the comments.

But here they are. I am freaked out by June Bugs and by going to the Doctor.

You know June Bugs, those big gross bulbous bodied bugs that come out in the summer in the south. They freak me out. But only 1/2 as much as doctors.

There, it's out, this is the same guy that once was chased up 3 flights of stairs by a schitzophrenic with a tire iron. June Bugs and Doctors, that's my achilles heel.

My wife has been bugging me to go to the doctor forever now. I keep saying I'll go but the truth is I am hoping that she will forget about it. I hate the doctor, can't stand him, would prefer that he be on the golf course rather than in the office. I will find any and all excuse not to go.

I even know why but it doesn't make it any easier to go. My dad has MS and I have always been terrified that one day I will go for a check up and they will say "Well, every thing looks normal except for this big brain tumor and looky what we found, you have an unborn twin attached to your chest." That's my fear and that's why I won't go.

When I was in college I had 6 stiches on my thumb from an embarrasing night. Rather than go to the doctor to get them taken out, I pulled them out myself with a pair of toenail clippers.

In Highschool I broke my right hand in 2 places from playing football. I was in a cast for 6 weeks. Rather than go to the doctor to get it taken off, I grabbed a hacksaw and spent the next 3 hours very carefully trying not to saw my arm off. I succeeded and thus a trip to the doctors office was very cleverly avoided. I am a genius.

But there was no dodging it this time. There is not hacksaw or toenail clippers that would get me out of this. Ever since we have had Little Hoss and have another on the way, we are very aware of our mortality. I don't trust anyone else to raise her in the Hossman way. I mean honestly, who would teach her how to give high fives? I am now teaching her the sports chest bump. We hope to have it ready by football season.

So I have to go to the doctor and I break down and ask my wife to come with me. I am a 2 year old again and I don't want to go alone. It's pathetic and I don't like it, but I know when I'm whipped.

But we are going to a new doctor this time because my old one is a massive tool. He gave me high cholestrol medication and said that there would be some "side affects." I just wanted to get the hell out of there so I didn't ask what those side affects might be. Listen up kids, that's a rookie mistake. It turns out, they were quiet serious. I realized this when around midnight of the first night, every inch of my body felt like I had a sunburn and a bad one. You ever have a sunburn on your taint, it hurts like shit.

The back of my ears, the bottom of my feet, my eyelids. Every place where there was skin, I was on fire. I was sure that I was having an allergic reaction and called the doctor at 1 in the morning. He stated that this was normal and nothing to worry about as many people get this side affect with this medication. I said it was nothing to worry about when I slashed his tires.

So I went in to get it changed and he gave me new medication. When I asked him if there were side affects he promptly responded that all medications have side affects and he left the room. Apparently one of the side affects of the new medication is being a jackass to the point where I will take a marker out of my pocket and write Dr. Roberts sucks donkey balls in the nearest bathroom stall.

I quit taking the medication and totally avoided all doctors. My wife was relentless though and she needed to be. I was like a stubborn water ox who was refusing to move out of the road. You were going to have to shoot me to get me to go.

But my wife persisted and even made the next appointment herself with her own doctor. I should have gone to this guy long before but I usually didn't care. But I do have a couple of little ones now so I gave up and went. She had to drive because atleast I wasn't going to make this easier on her.

We are at my new doctors office and I go to the window. My wife goes to sit down until I do the very hasty "get the hell over here motion" with my hand because for some reason I don't want to be at the nurses station by myself. It's like I have a fear that they are going to look at me, shake thier head very slowly, and instead of handing me insurance forms they are going to give me a listing of funeral homes.

We get the forms and we sit down. I'm sweating already which isn't good considering that I'm getting a physical. And then the jokes come. The nervous jokes that are followed by a "he he" that no one thinks are funny. I have no idea why I do this, but it's like a disease. I should see someone for it.

I now try to find every reason in the book on why not to be here. I let my wife know that I feel fine, great infact, high cholestoral is way over rated. I betcha it's just been hyped by the evil pharmacy companies. Yup, let's go.

I then go back up to the window to give my paperwork. No one is there. I immediately think to myself that if they obviously don't care enough to be at the window then I don't care enough to see the doctor. Time to go. She asks for my insurance card which I now cannot find. Yes, that's another reason to go.

I look at the waiting room and see that there are a few people there. In my head this equaled "swamped" and I tried to convience my wife that we should really just leave and let the doctor handle all these sick people. She was having none of it and when my name was called she had to practically push me through the door of no return. Dead man walking the green mile, that's what I felt like.

The first step is always getting weighed. I don't know if I was trying to not put my full weight on it or if the delirium of being in the doctors office freaked me, but I fell off the scale and had to catch myself like some bridesmaid at a wedding whose about to make a very bad decision. Sure, I'll sleep with the groom's uncle, why not have some fun.

I stepped on the electronic scale and looked down. I waited for the damage like a supermodel who had just purged. However, instead of getting a weight it blinked the words "Error". Freaking great, I have broken the scale. How fat am I. Why don't we just line up the med students to see the freakshow ladies and gentlemen. I called the nurse over. It's like when your credit card gets declined at the grocery store.

"Excuse me, miss, something seems to be wrong over here" I whisper not wanting to really want anyone to come over. It's like clogging a toilet in a public place, you just want to walk away. She assures me that the scale is old and that I'm not as fat as I thought. She even steps on it herself and gets the same message. What the hell, she must be some sort of S&M queen if she knew it was already broken and just wanted to crush my ego a little bit. She asks me for my weight and I low ball it. No need to be honest here..

We proceed then into the little prison room where your doctor will make you feel stupid. I am cracking jokes left and right and they are bad ones. They are knock knock jokes, I can't help myself. Also, when I get nervous, I fidget. I will take anything in hand and begin to rip it apart. Almost as soon as I sit down I grab the box of gloves and start pulling them out like my 16 month old daughter.

The doctor comes in and says my name but looks at my wife. Here is my next confession. I have a girls name. Before you meet me, you will swear that I am a chick. He looks at my wife until I let him know that nope, that's me man, the guy with the gotee. We laugh about it but I'm already thinking of the arguement that I need to make with my wife about how if he doesn't know who I am we should just leave, I am insulted even though this has happened 100 times and I have never been insulted.

We then talk and I decide that this is my breaking point. I can't hold it in anymore. I feel like that indian in "one flew over the cuckoo's nest" and I'm about to hurl a water cooler through a window.

I tell her everything, complete with cussing as that is what makes me feel in control. Jesus do I have issues.

I have high cholestoral, I use chewing tobacco and need to quit, I would marry an employee from Taco Beuno if she would get me free Muchacos, I have a wierd bump on my wrist that I'm sure is a twin, I may have a uninary tract infection because I always have to pee, my dad has MS, please don't touch my prostate and dear god I hate going to the doctor.

I havent' had a physical since I played football, hell no we are not doing the hernia test and coughing, I have troll feet, I started going bald when I was 18, I have probably destroyed your ear checker thingie and by the way, I broke all your tounge depressors.

Ahhhhhhhhh, let the good vibes in.

And she takes it all in, smiling no less. She sits and listens and doesn't freak out. My last doctor would have been out the door as soon as I said cholestoral but she stayed and my respect went up for her.

That is until she decided that we were going to do a complete physical, complete with an EKG as I have never had one.

I bascially live like I'm 18. I still eat like that and I'm paying for it. But dear god I do love me some apple pie from Mcdonalds. There was no need to check out the ticker then, but now I have to since I am past 30. Just kick me after I fall, let's make it easier on all of us.

In my head I know what an EKG is. I went to college, I read some books, so I know what this is. But I ask her to explain it to me because it is the tried and true delaying factor. Yes, I am hoping that she will forget that she wanted to give me an EKG to measure my heart if I stall long enough.

But it doesn't work which is how I ended up with no shirt on and the doctor with a razor. I am defiantly leaving now.

She is chatting quiet nicely about this anti smoking medication while she shaves 2 inch squares into my mound of chest hair. I'm smiling and nodding. Hands down the wierdest conversation I have ever had. I started to think that this might be a massage parlor that I wondered into. Then I realized what happens to me down south when I think of massage parlors so I knock that shit off right quick. It would ruin our first date.

She puts the sticky pads on and hooks up around 20 wires to my chest. I'm freaking out. This is it, this is where they find the heart murmur or the cancer or dear god help us all the fact that I have no heart but instead am a cheap knock off of the tin-man.

She plugs in the machine and I look at myself. I look like Neo in the Matrix before he is freed. I can't help it, I make this joke to my wife. Someone just shut me up.

I'm still talking when she says "Everything looks fine". It was less than 2 seconds. Either my doctor is that smart or can't wait to chest shave the next guy.

The whole vist lasted about an hour. Prodding, pokeing and bad jokes. I spent more time with her than my last 15 years of doctors visits. 2 boxes of latex gloves later, I'm free to go.

So now I'm going to be taking 2 medications. One for cholestoral that won't give me taint burn and one for quitting dipping. My wife was right, I should have gone way before.

But in my head, I just know, that the next time I go into one of those small rooms with my doctor. The first thing she will do is pull out a jar of June Bugs. Insane, yes, but entirely plausable.