The time between Christmas and New Year is always an opportunity to reflect on the year just past and to make resolutions and plans for the New Year. The year just past had generally been a good year for me and my family, and I looked ahead to the New Year with optimism.
My daughter Laura and I, both have birthdays in January separated by about two weeks, and it is been a tradition between the two of us to spend a day together and do something special. We call it our Triple “D” Day, or Dad and Daughter Day. In the past, we have gone for walks along the Monterey coast to watch the Gray Whales as they migrated south from Alaska to mate in the warmer waters of Baja California Mexico. On other occasions, we might go for a drive in the countryside and have lunch together afterwards.
For this New Year I wanted to do something quite different. I started to write down some possibilities, and it suddenly occurred to me that a balloon ride would make a great surprise. I live in Morgan Hill, California, a small town about 20 miles south of Silicon Valley. The town is situated on a narrow plain with hills rising to the East and West, and on calm days balloons can often be seen drifting over the town from South to North.
Looking through the Yellow Pages under the caption “balloons-manned”, I found “Gentle Adventures”. A call to the number listed was answered by a certain Captain Mick. I told him what I wanted to do. We agreed on a Saturday morning date, and I was requested to phone him the Friday evening before to check on the weather. I agreed and said I would send him a check the following day.
Thinking of birthdays made me realize that I would be 55 years old on the 28th of January, and I should start to have regular annual medical check-ups. I made a note in my diary to phone and make an appointment for later in the month with my general practitioner. However since I felt fine except for having to get up two or three times a night to go to the bathroom, a visit to the doctor was not a high priority. Some upcoming business trips seemed more important. Consequently, I did not get to see him until February 8th.
I have known Dr. John B. Quick for perhaps 16 years. At about five foot nine inches tall, he has a robust frame and an oval face surrounded by silver gray hair which is thin on top and ends with a full neatly trimmed gray beard and mustache. His view of the world is seen through mischievous gray-blue eyes that are magnified by thin-rimmed spectacles. He has an eclectic selection of hobbies, including playing the classical guitar, gardening, photography, and keeping snakes. He is also a very good doctor.
I first got to know John in the early nineteen eighties before the spread of HMO’s, when doctors used to have their own practices. We both have a passion for off-beat literature. One of the many books he gave me was “Oral Sadism and the Vegetarian Personality” and in turn I gave him “My Uncle Oswald” by Roald
Dahl, and several salacious books by Tom Sharpe.
Before moving to Morgan Hill our family lived for several years in San Jose and while digging in the front garden of our house we came across half a jawbone with three teeth still intact. I thought it came originally from a dog, but my wife Sarah was convinced the bones were human, so I decided to phone J.B.Q. who would be the final arbiter.
“John, I’ve got a non paying patient I think you might want to see,” I said over the phone. I went on to describe our find and he enthusiastically endorsed my suggestion. I took our archeological dig to his office where it seemed somehow at home amongst the various stuffed animals that roamed the office. His examination took a very short time for him to recognize that the bone we had found was in fact human. He showed me the various marks on the side of the jaw that proved it was human.
Beaded necklace, or on special occasions a bear claw necklace. Now in nineteen ninety seven, John leads a less stressful life working for a community clinic, The San Jose Medical Group. He lets other people look after running the business end of medicine while leaving him to concentrate on being a doctor.
Prior to seeing John, I had to run the gauntlet of Pat his able nurse. She calls me Howard with only a slight German accent. She measured my weight, blood pressure, pulse and temperature. I was now pronounced fit enough to see the good doctor. I said hello and shook the hand of my old friend who I had not seen for several years. We exchanged some pleasantries about books and authors, and I handed him the completed questionnaire I had been given a week before. It contained questions about mine and my close family’s medical history.
John (or Buster to those who know him well) asked me several questions relating to the questionnaire, while notes were duly scribbled on the form not written in any understandable language that the general public or even NASA would understand. Finally satisfied that all the paper work was in order and he had the most comprehensive chronology of mine and my close family’s health that I could provide, I was requested to remove all my clothes above the waist. He then proceeded with a cold stethoscope and a wooden spatula to listen to and prod all the normal areas of the body that one would expect a doctor of medicine to do.
Finally he looked at me over the rims of those glasses and started to ask me a number of questions about my private plumbing.
“Do you have difficulty peeing? Do you have any pain doing the same?” and several more questions of a similar vane.
“I have no difficulty or pain while peeing. But I do go to the bathroom two or three times a night,” I added. My suggestion that this was just a sign of getting older did not convince him.
“It must be times like these that you wish you were a gynecologist”? I nervously joked. He smiled in the affirmative. The good doctor was about to perform the dreaded digital rectal examination or DRE as it has become known. For those of you who are not of the male persuasion, what happens next is a traumatic experience both for the patient and doctor (unless you happen to be an urologist. This I found out later is something they seem to relish). John asked me to drop my trousers. I looked at him, with anguish in my eyes and asked him,
“Why?” he asked, somewhat bewildered.
“Because, I want to get a second opinion,” I said. He smiled, and despite my protestations, he proceeded with only one finger. He pushed and turned
“Your prostate is slightly larger than normal,” he said. As I pulled up my pants, he continued, “Almost all men start to have enlargement of the prostate after the age of 45. In most cases it will stop growing and there will be no side effects. On the other hand it can continue to grow into a tumor which can be either benign or cancerous”.
Nothing more was said about my prostate at this time and it was decided to give me a tetanus shot, since I could not remember the last time I had had one. John said he wanted to run some blood tests. I was given two labels with my name and patient number typed on them and shown the direction to the lab.
“Are you the legalized Vampire?”
Before leaving the clinic, I walked back to John’s secretary and made an appointment for the following week to go over the results of today’s examination. The rest of the day was uneventfully spent at work, and I gave no more thought to my morning medical exam. I got home about 6 o’clock that evening. I kissed Sarah, and asked her if there were any mail or messages for me.
“Yes, John Quick called” she said “They ran a test on your blood, and he seems concerned and wants you to call him”.
I phoned his office but he had already left. I looked up his home number and dialed, he answered on the third ring.
“Hi John, its Howard I’m sorry to phone you at home, but Sarah said you were concerned about a blood test?”
“Yes,” he said …..“ We ran a PSA test which measures the level of Prostate Specific Antigen. This is produced by both normal and cancerous cells in the prostate. A normal reading is between 1 and 4, and you have a reading of 8.5. Now this is not something for you to get alarmed about, but I would like you to see an Urologist. Why don’t you come by my office tomorrow morning, and I’ll have the necessary forms filled out for you to make an appointment with Dr. Foster.”
Next day, like a lamb to the slaughter house, I presented myself to Pat. She was sympathetic to my cause, and with a sad face and a warm heart she gave me the necessary introductory forms and a map to the next phase of my medical labyrinth.
Later that day, I phoned the Urology Department of The San Jose Medical Group to set up an appointment. However, due to the combination of our scheduled skiing trip to Tahoe and the hordes of people wanting to see the urologist, the earliest date we could agree on was March the first. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was destined to meet a stranger who was to be a part of my life for the foreseeable future. The venerable Dr. Lionel Foster. I arrived promptly at 11 o’clock on that fateful day, and presented my forms to Diana the young lady at the front desk, who, upon reading my name informed me,
“My boyfriends name is Howard also.”
“How strange to be called Also” I said.
“No, his first name is Howard”.
“Oh, so it’s his last name that is Also?”
“No he’s not called Also, it’s just that his first name is Howard.”
“I’m terribly sorry, I misunderstood you. Did you know my name is Howard also?” This temporarily ended the conversation. There was much typing on the computer keyboard, and her expression clearly conveyed that she felt I should be seeing a psychiatrist and not a urologist. Finally, she was forced to talk to me. I was asked about my medical insurance coverage and verification of home address and phone numbers etc. Next, there was a sudden eruption of noise as the 18th century dot matrix printer sprang to life. It outputted two labels with my name, patient number and a variety of other information. I was told to present these at the nurse’s station.
The delightful Stephanie appeared like a zephyr from thin air. She relieved me of my labels, one of which she applied to a small round plastic container with a lid which she held in her delicate hand.
“Would you please go to the washroom and give me a urine sample in this?” she asked, handing me the plastic container and pointed in the direction she intended me to go. With that beautiful smile, I would do anything for her. Inside the washroom there was a small door marked, “Open and put your samples inside”. It’s a bit like a confessional at a Catholic Church. Having completed the deed, I followed and obeyed the written instructions. I trusted that an unknown hand would remove my sample and transport it to a colleague of the legalized vampire for further analysis.
section, again in color, of the penis and bladder with an optical catheter leading through the penis and into the bladder, and a smiling rendition of a doctor looking through this instrument of torture. This, I was to find out a few weeks later, is a cystoscopic examination.
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