DETECTABLE by Judy Fowler

 

It’s spring—a time when reminders of my annual medical appointments pop up in my text feed like the daffodils outside my writing room window.    

Doctors’ offices remind me of police stations, which remind me of crime fiction. I don’t want to play the protagonist in a real-life thriller if I can help it. Since achieving a certain unmentionable age, when I hear myself say, “Uh-huh. Dr. Smith, Thursday the sixth, 11:45 a.m. Got it,” I know there’s a chance I’ll end up in a specialist’s office.

I recall when my retired inlaws put up a large calendar reserved for medical appointments in their kitchen. Now that I've started highlighting my doctors’ appointments in bright orange, I see why they did that. If I see the appointment coming, I've got a few days to get my story straight before the gumshoe in the white lab coat starts asking questions. 

Despite that preparation time, I always confess to something I meant to keep secret. Maybe it’s the way they send out an informant to put me on the scale just before my interview. It puts me on my back foot so that I feel guilty when I’m left alone in the cold interview room waiting for the lead detective to arrive.

Armed with evidence of my weight, it’s not hard for the investigator to get me to cop to other things, like how much coffee I drink or how little I exercise on the days I write. Unlike a tag team of trenchcoat-wearing detectives with little brown notebooks, the lone medic in white plays both good and bad cop while typing out everything I say.

The detection rate for murders is 90%, but the detection rate for cholesterol must be higher. That’s according to an informal survey of friends my age now. At seven years old, I feared the word “shot” the way I now fear the word “statin.”

My instinct as a writer to say whatever I'm thinking often leads to a specialist referral. For example, a few years back, after an eventless annual physical, I noticed aloud that my previously shapely legs seemed to be “looking more and more like my grandmother’s legs.” Out came the referral pad. As the song goes, the leg thing's connected to a neck thing. Now I’m serving two to five with a specialist whose prescription—after getting a blood sample and checking me for neck polyps twice every year—is for me to drink more water.

Before a friend's primary care physician died a few years back, all the patients received invitations to reminisce at a gathering in a downtown bar. Their final prescription? Get good and drunk. That sounds like a detective to me.

I don't know how these Sherlocks--criminal or medical--feel after another day of uncovering humanity's foibles and weaknesses. They deserve to tie one on at happy hour. It’s nice to know that one practitioner of the art of detection thought his patients deserved that, too.

 

  

WHY I READ by Judy Fowler

Abraham Lincoln's mother,
Nancy Hanks

I kicked off January by spending way too many hours watching televised souls struggle for power in D.C. Eventually, I looked away and visited friends, and promptly picked up Covid. 

Post-quarantine, I squeaked through a medical clearance exam for cataract surgery. In the days before it, I've used my bad eyes to drive a senior friend to appointments after his family took his car and left me to sort out his cognitive challenges day by day. 

I was listening to too much news and building up revenge fantasies. Life in the new year felt like an airless room. 

I went on an empathy quest. The quickest way to find it? Read.      

Even as a child, I picked up a book to find out how others felt when they went through things. I could be with someone else in ways childhood had yet to afford me. I got relief from the pressure of self-consciousness.  

Whether the struggling character was Abe Lincoln's mother (that's her, Nancy Hanks, Kentucky Girl, in the portrait above), or the starch-capped Sue Barton, Student Nurse, their journeys and how they felt about them gave me access to another person's point of view. I could ponder how I'd handle their challenges. I appreciated their innate resources and thought about my own. 

I lived in a 'don't talk about your feelings' world. Stories allowed me to sort out my feelings. 

Empathic authors took time to draw characters for me. I felt loved and cared for the more I loved and cared for those characters. 

My father lived with us, but I admired how Pippi Longstocking, who survived alone with just a horse and a monkey, handled the arrival of a truant officer. What would I have done? The Five Little Peppers lived with their widowed mother. Teamwork allowed them to preserve the fun of childhood. 

When The Borrowers lost their home in the wall of a house and had to live in a field, it scared me. My heart went out to them. They were indoor people. So was I.

But they made it. 

I learned, one slow or fast page at a time, how others perceive Which resources they do or don't have.  Storytellers opened a window to different perspectives. 

Empathy was the air in the room. 

Now, whether I'm reading how Things Fall Apart for people drawn by Chinua Achebe, or Going Rogue with Janet Evanovich's Stephanie Plum, I connect with a character, experience their perspective, and feel what they feel. 

In just moments, we meet where it matters. I relax into compassion for us both. 

They see things through. They don't quit. It's all about the three acts for them, and not just the moment at hand. 

Thanks to the thoughtfulness of writers, I can see someone else's story arc and know my own. 

Why do you read?