Comic Interlude 8

We interrupt regular broadcasting once again to bring you a few cartoons from our resident cartoonist…

This series focuses on, as the old folks say, doctoring. As you will see from the upcoming cartoons, doctoring for the “large” person leaves a whole lot to desire.

1.

City Scales – Created by Don Cheke

Perhaps you remember the cartoon in Comic Interlude 7 about flying cargo class and being weighed as part of the mix. Well, if you haven’t already guessed, the hassles of being weighed, or being heavy, are not confined to air travel. Weight determination permeates all aspects of a large person’s life, but it is extremely prevalent when one must visit the doctor’s office or the hospital. Why is it that the very first thing they want to do when you arrive at the appointment is weigh you. Can’t they just tell by looking that you are overweight? I think that any reasonable person can take a look at me and can imagine that I weigh about the same as two average sized people and an empty steamer trunk combined, or two apes and a bunch of bananas. What’s that, about 480 pounds, 550 tops. 😊 Since I refuse to step on the scale at the doctor’s office the whole visit starts off on the wrong foot. On one visit, the aid that got the ball rolling with data collection got flustered and baffled at my refusal to be weighed. She then said that she would just get my height, which was acquired on the same apparatus. I caught her attempting to take my weight anyway as she measured my height. I stepped off before she was done, thus thwarting her efforts. Once I got in to see my doctor, I told her that she needed to have a word with the aid. I said that the staff needed to respect a person when they don’t want to be weighed. If you are like me, or like Loaf, you do not want to be defined by your weight, which is how it feels to me whenever my weight is requested. I know that there are times when having one’s weight taken is required, such as pre-surgery, when they need to determine how much anesthesia will be required to keep you from screaming at the doctor, as he or she opens you up to check the oil pump and tighten the spark plugs, or whatever it is they do in there, but then I just tell them to weigh me without telling me the results. I suppose I could do that at the doctor’s office, but I resent the whole practice and just refuse to take part in it.

In the cartoon above, Loaf has decided that he will be in charge of taking his own weight, should he ever care to know. Being large, he feels that the city vehicle scales at the landfill is the route to go, since he has broken every bathroom scale he has ever stepped on. For goodness’s sake, if a scale can only weigh a maximum of 180 pounds, why on Earth did the Creator produce a genome that can allow a person’s body to hit 1200 pounds or more. Bad design for sure! LOL!

Note the truck in the above cartoon. I want one just like that! 😊 Yes please!

2.

Blood Pressure Cuff – Created by Don Cheke

You’d think that in this age of civilization, and the ever-increasing size of people in general, that the doctor’s office would have found, and have on hand, a large cuff blood pressure sleeve. Nope, they typically have a child-sized cuff, and a regular-sized cuff on hand, which is supposed to be for the rest of humanity. Well, as every large person knows, the adult cuff doesn’t fit all, and the embarrassment and resentment of having to go through the futile ritual makes them want to find their own solution. It stuns me every time I have to go through this routine how the aid trying to do the procedure, is dumbfounded at how they can’t get the device to work. I think, just put the cuff on my wrist and try there, or get a cuff that fits large people, and keep it with the others. How hard can it be! 😊

As you can see in the cartoon above, Loaf has found the perfect solution with a visit to the local fleet center where Fred, the proprietor, will do so for a small, but reasonable fee. 😊

3.

Phlebotomy – Created by Don Cheke

Although my doctor would like me to get my blood drawn two or three times a year for testing purposes, I limit myself to once a year for the most part. I do this because the process of getting my blood drawn is another experience best left to someone else. I don’t know if it is because I am a large person, or just my body design, but every time I go for this procedure it takes two or three phlebotomy technicians to get the job done. They complain all the while that they can’t find veins because they are far deeper than most people, and when they do find one it shrinks or rolls out of the way. By the time the blood is drawn, I have had both arms poked, sometimes more than once to find a suitable vein. Sometimes they put heating pads on my inner arms to try and get the veins to rise, or puff up, or whatever they are hoping for, and one time I had the last phlebotomist take the blood from a vein in my foot. During this process, there is much discussion about what I should do, such as coming at a different time of the day when more technicians are on duty so someone can spend the time with me and not tie up the waiting line. I am sure that they wish I would go elsewhere, but I quietly refuse to do so.

4.

Dr. Sigmoid – Created by Don Cheke

This entry is on a bit more of a serious note.

Both my wife and I suffer from ulcerative colitis, with varying periods of flareup and remission, all the while taking daily meds to stay off the flare-ups. I am convinced that our colitis is a type of industrial disease, a “gift,” as we call it, from the mega chemical company called DuPont. I am sure you have heard of them. I realized one day that this “gift” came from them when I read of a class action suit that exposed their criminal negligence and outlined the eventual payouts that were made to a large number of complainants. Here are some key elements.

• The class action lawsuit against DuPont centered around the chemical perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA), also known as C-8, which was used in the manufacturing of Teflon.
• DuPont started using C-8 in the 1950s. By the 1960s, DuPont scientists and company management knew C-8 was toxic and that it was contaminating local groundwater in and around Parkersburg, West Virginia. Make note that internal DuPont scientists themselves confirmed this to be true.
• Exposure to C-8 has been linked to six specific health issues, including kidney cancer, testicular cancer, thyroid disease, ulcerative colitis, pregnancy-induced hypertension, and high cholesterol.
• The lawsuit was centered around the residents of Parkersburg, West Virginia, the location where the chemical was used in the manufacturing plant and made its way into the groundwater, as mentioned above. It is my belief that the chemical was not confined to Parkersburg and surrounding area but made its way to all of us who utilized Teflon cookware between 1950 and 2013, when DuPont finally quit using it. Can you imagine – they used C-8 for approximately 50 years after they already knew it caused the illnesses mentioned above.
• In the early 2000s, residents near the plant filed lawsuits due to health problems from contaminated water. A class of nearly 80,000 individuals was certified in 2002. DuPont agreed to treat the water and inform the community about the dangers of C-8 exposure. They also funded a scientific study to investigate the health effects of C-8.
• The scientific study took seven years and confirmed the link between C-8 and several diseases. DuPont settled thousands of lawsuits for $671 million in 2017. Other individual suits continued from there, some specific to individual diseases, like cancer. Sadly, Denise nor I were not part of this class action suit and will never receive anything for the suffering we have endured because of eating the Teflon that flaked off our cookware over the years.

Obviously, both my wife and I are from the era of Teflon. I recall that we used Teflon cookware for many years and I ultimately believe that we were exposed to C-8 or some variant each time we cooked with a Teflon pan. I am sure that some would argue this point, but I am not so sure I would believe that the C-8 contamination was contained solely in the Parkersburg area. If I am wrong, that is okay, but DuPont poisoned enough people and hid the fact from the public for far too many years to earn any forgiveness.

I know that we take risks with advances in industry, technology, and medicine, so it isn’t surprising when things go awry, like limbless babies due to thalidomide, but when a company continues to poison it’s end users, even after proving it themselves to be dangerous, then there is no excuse, no legitimate justifiable reason that they should continue to use it. That they should lose profit or sales is not an excuse in any sane person’s mind!

So why such a serious topic in a comic interlude? Why not! Like they say, if you can’t laugh at it all, you just end up crying about something you can’t do anything about anyway.

One of the humilities of having to deal with colitis for years on end, is the far too often visits to the gastroenterologist. The cartoon above illustrates Loaf’s experience with said doctor, Doctor Sigmoid in this case. Loaf is not looking forward to the experience. Nope, not at all. 😊

5.

Waiting Room – Created by Don Cheke

You don’t have to be a large person to hate the waiting room in virtually every medical facility. First off, there are all the other patients. It’s bad enough that they are people, but sick ones to top it off. Then there are the crying babies and screaming, and very annoying, preschoolers. Can’t they just stay home!? In addition to that, most medical waiting rooms have a TV blaring its garbage to everyone in the room or talk radio grating on everyone’s nerves. Can’t people just sit quietly with their own thoughts!? Loaf makes a point of switching these devices off when he can get away with it. These days, everyone has a smartphone, and now we get to listen to their music, their videos, or their extra loud conversations. Someone, please shoot me, is a thought that often comes to mind while in these situations.

Everyone can relate to the long wait times too. They want you to be on time, but they see no problem having you wait for an hour or more for your turn. Loaf has considered billing the clinic for all the time he has wasted there waiting his turn. It is almost unconscionable when one finds that they require a minor emergency clinic or a drop-in clinic and they have no appointment. Well, one might just as well bring a sleeping bag and pillow, as the wait will be hours, typically five to eight, depending on the type of clinic or emergency room it is.

Here in Saskatoon, our population has doubled in the last ten or so years. There are not enough doctors to go around, and my own personal GP, who is very near full retirement, told me one time that the University is not producing any more doctors than they did when she was learning to become one. She said that it is a crazy notion not to accommodate more students and graduate more doctors. It’s not the same for dentists or vets here in Saskatoon, as there seems to be a new dental office or vet clinic popping up on every street corner or mall in the city. Most dentists are struggling to maintain a full complement of patients, so they are now offering other services like Botox injections, or other things they are allowed to do. Botox injections at the dentist office – reminds me of Loaf getting his blood pressure taken at Fred’s Fleet Center. 😊

To wrap up waiting rooms, note that large people have the added frustration of rarely finding a chair that will fit their bulk. Typically, the small chairs have arms, which make it near impossible to squeeze in. The chairs are usually set arm to arm with other chairs, and if you were by some miracle able to squeeze into the seat, you’re shoulder to shoulder with someone who is sicker than you. Worst of all is if your neighbor is coughing all over the place, spreading their filth, as I often think. If the large person is able to squeeze into the chair they have the added worry that it might not hold their bulk and then find themselves on the floor with the legs of the chair sticking out under them in all directions of the compass. Loaf has decided that from now on he will bring his own chair everywhere he goes, including waiting rooms, as well as restaurants and the residents of friends where he stops for coffee or a meal once in a while. A good stiff and sturdy steel armless model will do the trick!

6.

Doctoring – Created by Don Cheke

This comic was created specifically to introduce this comic interlude. As I alluded above, there are far too many people for the number of doctors that exist. It has become common place for doctors to refuse to take on new patients, so the drop-in clinics are getting overrun with masses of people. Earlier, I mentioned the long wait times in these clinics, but also prevalent is the restrictions on what a person can relay to the doctor and the time allotment they are given. What everyone hears is, “one ailment per session, and a maximum of ten minutes with the doctor.” If you are a doctor in these medical mills, you either keep the pace or you move on to a new location, maybe even in a different city. It was an interesting time when my personal physician decided that the pressures of the medical mill did not fit with her outlook, so she moved on to a community clinic and took a few of her patients with her, including me and my wife. As always, I may have to wait for her to get caught up and thus wait for an hour to see her, but she will give me all the time I need for my appointment, which both Denise and I have appreciated very much.

Ah, doctoring, a blessing, and a curse!

We now return to regularly scheduled programming….

Donald B. Cheke – September 23, 2024