I've never liked to go for a doctor's visit. I'm always nervous and I always over dress. I feel like I am going to be on display. I worry about everything from having bad breath to ' is the skin on my elbows too rough'. I'm just not an up close and personal type of woman. I don't like to be poked and prodded even if that is what I pay them for. And I hate the waiting. However I do go for my regular check ups.

But after my last visit, it may be my last visit.

Allow me to elaborate on my not so pleasant experience at my doctor's office the other day...

After a very short wait in the main waiting room they called my name and then put me in a white room with a chair, a cabinet with a small sink, a rolling stool and an exam table. Now this sounds pretty normal so far doesn't it? I thought so too.

The next logical step would have been that after a wait of no less than twenty minutes, the doctor would come through the door with my chart in hand.

He didn't. Thirty minutes crawled by and still no one came. Each time I heard a voice outside my door I would cough or clear my throat really loud..in case they had forgotten me...but still no one came. Forty minutes elapsed. I could feel the hair on my legs starting to grow back. I just knew that I was going to sweat, even though the thermostat was set to ten below zero. Was my mascara smudged? Did I have lipstick on my teeth? I pulled up my shirt just to make sure I had worn my good bra. I looked down at my toes peeking out from my sandals. 'Ohhhhh! my toes are turning blue. I need to see a doctor,' I thought. Then I remembered that I had used some of my granddaughter's nail polish. Funny, it had looked pink last night though.

Finally after an hour of this unmitigated torture, I marched to the door and opened it a crack and stuck my head out. "May I please go to the bathroom?" I squeaked to the lady sitting at the desk nearby.

She said of course and that I would be the next patient seen by the doctor.

And, sure enough, she was wrong. I returned from the bathroom and sat down to wait some more. I counted the cotton balls in the jar on the table. I rearranged the tongue depressors in the cup. I took out all the rubber gloves and refolded them and returned them to the box. I memorized the emergency fire exit map on the wall. I memorized the eye chart. ( I can now pass an eye exam from way across the street, if the need should ever arise.)

I read the notice taped to the door. Do Not Sit Or Play On Rolling Stool! Hmmm. Defiantly I sat down on it. That felt good. So I sat on it again, rolled myself across the room and then spun it round and round and round. It made me get dizzy and sick to my stomach. Guess that's why they said don't do that!

Now I don't claim to be the sharpest knife in the drawer, but even I know this is not your normal waiting time in a doctor's office.

I was becoming more and more agitated by the minute. I climbed up onto the exam table and mussed the pillow and wrinkled the paper sheet. I paced the floor. I chewed a whole pack of gum. I made a game of seeing how many pieces I could get into my mouth at one time. I looked at the clock again. I had been in this windowless, five by seven room for exactly one hour and forty seven minutes. Broken and exhausted, I finally sank back into my chair, wound my hands in my hair and began to rock back and forth humming to myself, "Noooo--boddddy knooows the tru--ble I see..."

The door opened and the doctor came in, looking around the room in an odd way. "I am so sorry you had to wait so long," he apologized.

"Oh that's quite alright, it wasn't a problem." I lied through my teeth, hoping he wouldn't notice the claw marks on the inside of the door. (boy, I can be so phony sometimes all in the name of good manners)

After he checked my vitals, banged me on my knee with the hammer, stuck the ice-cold stethoscope to my back, he wrote something in my chart. Then he informed me that I needed a B12 shot. "And maybe something for that cough," he added. "Wait here and I'll be right back" he said heading toward the door.

This was more than I could bear. I flung myself to the floor, latched onto his ankle with a death grip and began to sob. "Don't leave me in here again. I can't take this room anymore I screamed as he walked down the hall, dragging me behind him, attached like a third limb to his ankle. He looked at his nurse and shook his head. He whispered something to her, then handed her my chart.

'"Where would you prefer the shot, Dear? in the arm or hip?" the nurse asked.

"Right here in the hall," I said.

I didn't care if she stuck it in my eye...so long as I didn't have to go back into That Room! Ever Again!

Studies have been concluded, and it is now a scientifically proven fact that waiting two hours in a white room will make you crazy.

Written by an early twentieth century renaissance man, Lt. Col. John McCrea, a Canadian Army medical officer, physician, college professor and poet, who was inspired by a visit to Flanders Fields, a small American Military Cemetery on the France/Belgium border

In Flanders Fields the poppies blow

            Between the crosses, row on row,

            That mark our place, and in the sky

            The larks, still bravely singing, fly

            Scarce heard amid the guns below.

            We are the dead.  Short days ago

We lived, felt dawn, saw sunsets glow,

Loved, and were loved, and now we lie

In Flanders Fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw

The torch; be yours to hold it high.

If ye break faith with us who die

We shall not sleep, though poppies grow

In Flanders Fields

He stretches forth a trembling hand--
Only his right one remains--
to touch his comrades chiseled in the stone,
cold as death beneath the white-hot sun
He ignores his own reflection
in the polished black granite;
he searches for his name instead.
Odd! It should be there,
right next to Bobby Joe's.
Bobby, with the snapping blue eyes,
the eternal smile,
the girl in Mississippi who loved him.
Bobby Joe, who will never be twenty-two,
despite all the years that have come and gone.
He was there when Bobby fell.
They both died there in the jungle that day;
didn't they? Bobby Joe and he?
Strange that his own name isn't on the wall.
He clutches the brown paper sack
that contains all his future days and nights,
and stumbles away into a world
he no longer recognizes.

© Leeuna Foster 1991 All Rights Reserved.

I often ponder on things. (omygod, I so totally said the word ponder... ponder is such a funny word! )

I was thinking about inventions and inventors this morning, and where they get the idea for the things they invent. Like those pull tabs on aluminum cans. I wonder how that idea come about.

Was Ermal Cleon Fraze drinking a soda one day when he looked at the can and thought to himself...hmmm. Why don't they just cut a hole in the top, attach a ring to it and then stick it back on the can. Without the aid of a can opener, people can pop the top off and drop it into their drink. Then several million people can swallow the tab, gash their throat, jab a hole in their intestines and suffer deep agony and possible death. Yeah. I bet that'll sell really well.

And it did. It also gave those really tacky home decorators the opportunity to create curtains made from chains of 'drink tabs'. Didn't you just love those!  Me neither.

Of course everything that is invented is always improved upon. Later on, someone decided the gashing and jabbing was too harsh, so they opted to leave the slice of metal attached to the can. It's much safer now.  Now it just rips the fingernail off down to the flesh whenever we try to open it.

And the names they come up with for these inventions. Like the tooth brush. Did the person who  invented it have only one tooth? Why didn't  they  called it a teeth brush? And then there's the vacuum cleaner. Does this mean you are cleaning a vacuum?  Isn't a vacuum just a space with nothing at all in it? ...Yeah, that's what my dictonary said too. Like wise with the iron. It's made out of chromium plated steel and cast aluminum, and it presses cloth. There's no iron in it. No vitamins nor minerals either.

The New York Post certainly answered a burning question for us this week. One that I'm sure has kept all of us up many nights worrying and wondering about, and possibly even pondering:  What's on Hillary Rodham Clinton's iPod?

Songs from her youth figure heavily in the selection of about 1,000 songs, said Clinton, who called herself  "a child of the '60s and '70s.''

Motown tunes, classical music and the Rolling Stones are all on her playlist, the 58-year-old senator told The New York Post. 

''I've got everything -- a total smorgasbord,'' Clinton said.  She said the mix includes Aretha Franklin's Respect, The Beatles' Hey Jude and Take it to the Limit by The Eagles.

According to sources close to Hillary, she also admitted to listening to Black Sabbath and Alice Cooper a 'couple of times' just to see what they were about. "But I did not inhale", she hastened to add.

Clinton, a possible presidential candidate in 2008 who is running for reelection to the Senate this year, said her favorite time to listen to the music player is when she's doing paperwork at home. (probably in her bathroom.)

 Even a Senator's business isn't finished until the paper work is done.