Stop It Doc, You're Killing Me!

They say that laughter is the best medicine. Tell that to my brand new cardiologist who has prescribed five different daily medications to keep me from having a repeat heart attack, and a couple more that are optional if I'm feeling bad. He said nothing about laughter. In fact, the whole time I was in the hospital, which was four days, there was nothing funny about it. That is, not unless you were looking for it.

One thing that cracked me up was the mountain of paperwork shoved in my face before any doctor would fix the clogged artery that caused the horrible nausea, overwhelming back pain, bizarre heaviness in my arms and strange feeling in my lungs that landed me in the ER in the first place. Most of it promised I would not sue anyone under any circumstances even if the whole thing turned out to be very, very bad.

My favorite one was proffered as I was being loaded into the ambulance that would take me from the lesser, ill-equipped hospital I had arrived at to another, half an hour away, that had all the right stuff. I was instructed to sign here, and then here, agreeing to the following:

~~ I understand that the ambulance could be involved in a high-speed automobile accident, causing me injuries or death.

~~ Riding in a speeding ambulance with sirens blaring could prove stressful enough to cause me to have another heart attack while in transit.

"Wait a minute -- am I on Candid Camera?" I asked. Judging by the vacant stares of the young people gathered around me, I understood that none of them had ever heard of Candid Camera, so I signed. Hey, why not?

Another laugh riot was when my doctor said, just before wheeling me in for the procedure to fix my heart, "You should know that this procedure does not insure you against having another heart attack at any time. In fact, having one already raises the probability of your having another." Ha, ha, ha --stop it Doc, you're killing me! I asked him if I could catch the rest of his act at any of the comedy clubs around town, but apparently his only gig is at Maine Medical Center.