Teddy

It has come to my attention that something good can not happen to me without something bad also happening to me. I do not care that others have told me that this is directly related to some false notions I have about the world conspiring against me because these notions are not false if it is true. It is true that I have had some ups and downs these past two weeks, but these downs have all been made up for by the fact that I have been offered employment.

However, directly after receiving an offer, I have been experiencing symptoms that I have self diagnosed as being an ulcer. I am okay with this, except for the fact that my college reunion is this weekend and I am not exactly considering curbing my drinking/smoking cigarettes and/or other substance intake in the immediate future. My readership might be aware of this, but M&M combined have about seventy prescriptions. This variety includes ones to moderate their craziness, but one of these prescriptions I am well aware of is to moderate M's ability to drink seven lattes a day as her meals and take her various drugs to control her "pain" and "neurosis." This drug is prevacid. Some of you might also be aware of the fact that because I grew up in a "medical" household, I consider myself perfectly capable of making some sound medical decisions and know that the drug I need is in fact prevacid to moderate my symptoms.

Fine, so I took it upon myself to call M&M and tell them my problem. M&M have never been ones to resist giving their children necessary drugs. All throughout college and law school Atticus Finch and I were adequately supplied with drugs to increase our attention and performance on academic endeavors. So I really did not think that asking for something to ease my digestive track should be treated as though I was asking for crack. However, I should have known that the moment they heard I was going to my college reunion; they would revoke their offer as I failed to meet my husband the four years I spent on campus. Therefore, it seems unlikely that a return to this misery for a weekend will bring me such luck. Furthermore, they could not believe that anyone but complete spinster losers were returning and presumed that Dipshit (recently married friend) was not going because why would she? Ultimately, they demanded that I go see Teddy (our seventy five year old cousin who also happens to be a GI specialist) to get the prescription. Obviously, I must go to Teddy where I can be treated for free because no self-respecting physician takes the welfare insurance I pay four hundred dollars a month for.

While I appreciate M&M's thinly veiled earnest suggestion, my major gripe is that Teddy treats primarily eighty year old orthodox Jews in the projects. I know this because two weeks ago I went to go see Teddy for my tonsillitis and was stuck in the waiting room between two wheel chaired geriatrics yelling in Yiddish only interrupted by quick naps. The truth is, Atticus Finch and I can go see Teddy provided that our complaints have nothing to do with his specialty; Gastroenterology. Because if your gripe, as is the case with mine, has anything to do with a digestive problem Teddy tries to guilt you into getting a colonoscopy after telling you that you are an alcoholic. While M&M think this is perfectly acceptable, I have tried to explain to them that my other friends who are in their twenties and have had similar complaints have never been treated so aggressively. Teddy is not wrong per se, for when one of his usual ninety five yr. old patients complains about let us say heart burn, their heart is most likely about to give out.

Here is my major concern, because I refused to undergo Teddy's battery of tests the last time I consulted him on some similar digestive related matter, I believe that his distribution of the prevacid is contingent upon these tests. I will have to report back, but in the event this is true, I am going to tell M&M that my reading of M's revised novel is contingent upon M undergoing these tests for me. No one will notice.