More of the same, and a transformation

Dr. G. almost persuaded me to schedule a test that I've resisted for ten years or so. It must be the only test I haven't had at one weak moment or another. He did send me for a chest X-ray and scheduled a diagnostic mammogram/whatchamacallit--ultrasound, for next week I think. I asked him again about the big red spot on my right leg, about the size of the red spot on Jupiter. Several years ago he prescribed an antibiotic for it, which had no effect on the spot. Another time he said it was probably fluid collection due to my age. This time he said it's a bunch of miniature varicose veins. Sent in some new prescriptions for my meds, so when my swallower is feeling empowered, I'll start back on that stuff.

Dr. G. has been my internal med. physician for going-on twenty years now. When I first started seeing him, he looked purely scary. He's about as tall as Michael Crichton, with white skin, black hair and eyes, bushy black eyebrows, enormous bone structure. As a young man he wore a sort of long crew cut, which meant his hair stood up like a brush. I guess you call it a brush cut, only it was spiky. His head looked too small for the rest of him, and he had this sort of stiff self-conscious posture that made you want to look somewhere else to keep from embarrassing him.

Now the man must be in his late forties or early fifties. I've always said that age was kinder to men than to women, all else being equal. Dr. G. is now one of the handsomest men I've ever seen in person. Over the years he has developed composure, a comfortable sense of humor, a little meat on his bones, and a decent barber for his straight, white-streaked black mop.