Dear Doctor

Dear Doctor – The Rolling Stones

Instant nausea. Sweating. God, can I sweat. My mouth is watering. I need to throw up, there's no way around it. Only thing is: I am afraid to even blink, let alone heave. Standing between me and a purifying round of projectile vomiting is the metal instrument that, from the feel of it, is trying to stab my frontal lobe to shreds by way of my right ear. The doctor at the other end of the stick is trying hard – sweat on his brow, too – to scrape a full summer's worth of caked ear wax out of my head. His assistant, a worrisome twenty-something, is holding up an awkward looking, '80s desk lamp to my right lobe, her eyes shut tight against the bright light. Or maybe she's trying to shield her innocence against the clotty mess the doctor is hauling out of my ear with grim resolve – brains and all, if necessary. I press my nails into my palms and sit quiet as a mouse – well, I am squealing like a piglet getting a shave, obviously, but without so much as a whisker twitching.

Out of 30,085 (give or take) practicing physicians in New York City (says NYC.com) I have dug up one right around the corner from our place, on West 97th Street. Or rather, I have found two: one general practitioner and one gastroenterologist sharing a practice. It's open for consultation, all day long, the lady on the phone reassures me. In a long, healthy family tradition I have waited to see a doctor until my loved ones couldn't stand my pseudo-brave litanies ('Really, I'm feeling much better – Don't touch it!! What, are you crazy?!') any longer. Last straw is the moment I whine out loud on how our apartment seems drenched in stale French cheese for three continuing weeks now – and my sweetheart delicately (and from a considerable distance) points out that really, I am the only one actually smelling Camembert where ever I turn to the right and maybe, just maybe, is it possible that the smell is coming from inside my own head? There is no further denying: I am suffering from a bad case of cheese-ear and it's not going to heal on its own. To the doctor's it is.

The doctor's office is fitted with four rows of tepid smelling patients, some moaning softly, some explaining in assiduous Spanish why they really, seriously should see the doctor right now. Either of them. The desk ladies are in perfect control of everything, except of the incessant tears streaming down the face of one of them, a tremendous ruin of a woman. In between the friendly and firmly directing of patients back to their seats and the copying of identity cards, nameless rivers are leaking from her crushed face. Every time the phone rings, she resolutely addresses herself in Spanish, snorts and answers in a tone that is just a bit too bold, 'Doctor X and Y's office, how can I help you!' She listens, answers in Spanish and sometimes in English, hangs up the phone and buries her crumpled face in her plump hands once more.

Then she looks up, sighs, and calls out my name. Do I have insurance? Of course I do, I nod confidently as I flash my Dutch Achmea World Health Insurance Card. The desk lady and I both stare hopefully at the plastic card for a bit, as if, any second, it can transform into an exotic doctor who will magically heal my cheese-ear and whisk her away from her tear stained life, to a place where everything is good and beautiful and well insured. No such luck. The lady sighs again, then smiles and says: 'Do you have anything else on you?' Not yet, I start valiantly, but you see, as soon as I am registered as a legal partner I will be added onto my sweetheart's insurance. So I do not have any actual health insurance in the US, at this moment? Well… I can't just be tucked away into the line of 46.3 million Americans without any kind of health insurance (says the U.S. Census Bureau, statistics 2008), can I? 'You know what, dear', the lady solves any upcoming am-to, am-not insured debate, 'what if I make a copy of your ID and enter that into our system for now, and you can go see the doctor for 110 dollars. Once you are insured, you will be reimbursed for the money.' And so it is done.

So here I am, in a pretty bad state. Without puking, or moving, for I am sure this doctor will not hesitate to yank my sense of humor out through my ear, for all the world to see. His private office forces itself upon the corners of my eyes: a row of peculiarly put up – for every single one is askew at the exact same angle – paintings (crying Gypsy boy, ocean panorama, still life with fruit), dust flecks on the carefully slanted frames. Stacks of papers on the desk, the floor, the window sills, the bookcase, the relentlessly patched up upholstered chair.
On a wash table coated with a determined grease film, a glass jar filled with surgical instruments. No two minutes ago the doctor, using his pen, pulled the metal stick that is now jammed down my ear from that same jar. On a coffee table next to the door are a couple of happy family pictures: the doctor, his arms around two successful looking young men; a little girl on a swing. Not a glove in sight. Or a professional examination lamp, for that matter – hence the assistant. Next to me lies the full scale model ear the doctor used to explain what he had in store for me. 'Ay theenk you hab ay sure-o-money infection, si, and plus a regular eer infection, tambien', he declares after a whiff of my ear. 'Forst, I wheel take out dee eer wax, and after, wee will see. I know dat aroma, ha ha! Dat aroma ees classico!' We both laugh.

That was ten minutes ago. As it is, the doctor is using one leg to brace himself against the examination table; his free hand freeze-fixes my head as he is rummaging around my most inner thoughts. Suddenly, with a horribly smacking plorp sound, he pulls back his arm. He almost trips, grabs his perplexed assistant by the head to steady himself, lets out a breath of relief and says, 'Bueno! Dat ies part one!' Another ten minutes and one woozy ear flush session later, I am back in the lobby, clutching a prescription for antibiotics and one for eardrops – to cure both my regular ear infection and my additional Pseudomonas infection – and a check-up appointment in ten days. I leave behind my inner beauty in a metal dish: a pestilent, pungent nugget in stark yellow and clotted red. Nice.