Hands Shakin', Knees Weak

There was a stretch of time while I lived in Philadelphia when I would regularly pass out at night in front of the television. That meant that at around 5 the next morning when the broadcast day began, I'd be roused from a sticky and dreamless drunken stupor by a public service ad. One of two, usually.

It was either a wheezing, cancer-riddled Yul Brynner just a few weeks prior to his death urging me not to smoke, or a wheezing, cancer-riddled and wheelchair-bound John Huston also just a few weeks before his death, likewise urging me not to smoke.

"Don't smoke," they'd gasp as the grim, minute-long commercial drew to a close.

Being scolded by ghosts was an undeniably creepy way to wake up every morning, but it always prompted me to get up off the floor and go have myself a smoke.

Those commercials were on my mind again earlier this week as I walked down the familiar street, smoking furiously, on my way to another doctor's appointment.

This one was different, though. It was, in theory at least, the last doctor's appointment in what had been an exhausting four-month stretch of endless appointments and unpleasant tests of all sorts. It was also the appointment where I was supposed to get most of the results back from those tests. It would wrap a neat little bow on everything-even if that bow turned out to be black.

The neurologist had merely shrugged at me a week or two earlier, and now it was the cardiologist's turn to fill me in. These were the results I was most interested in, given that I'd been sent to him so unexpectedly after the neurologist took a look at my blood pressure. A long family history of heart disease and cancer combined with 20 straight years of smoking and drinking (in spite of John Huston's urgings to the contrary) had me mildly antsy. More curious than antsy, really. I can't say I was all that terribly concerned, but you never know what these fellows are going to come up with. I'd had sonograms and X-rays and stress tests and blood work, so if there was something going on, now was when I'd find out.

As I sat there, my feet dangling off the side of the examination table, the doctor flipped through the results in his file, then told me I had mild asthma ("you might hear yourself wheezing on occasion," he said), a small leak in one of my heart valves, and a cholesterol level that was "just a touch high."

Apart from that (and ignoring for the moment everything else), I was in surprisingly good shape for as much abuse as I've inflicted upon my body over the past couple of decades.

The news caught me off guard. You could even say I was vaguely disappointed.

I mean, after all those doctors and all those tests and all that money and lost time, I think they owe me some satisfaction. Some fantastic, exotic disease to make all the nonsense seem worthwhile. Something like Beri-Beri or raging phlebitis or one of those things I have a color plate of in my skin-diseases book.

Apart from telling me to go on a low-cholesterol diet, that was it. I was done. I decided immediately to ignore the bit of advice about the diet. Way I saw it, if I can make it to 40 eating the way I do with a cholesterol level that's only "a touch high," I'm pretty far ahead of the game already, so why screw with it?

I thanked him and stood to leave. But as I was walking down the hall toward the waiting room, he called after me.

"Could you stop into my office for a second, please?" he asked. I shrugged and did what he asked, taking a seat and removing my hat. I had no idea what he might want. I was officially finished-no more tests, no more referrals. This was it, at least until something else came along. So what could he want?

After talking quietly with one of the nurses in the hall, he came in and closed the door behind him.

I liked this doctor, which is rare for me. He may look and sound a bit too much like Adam Sandler for comfort, but he seemed to have a far better grasp on things than most of the doctors I'd seen in recent years. Like that Asian fellow whose basic examination consisted solely of grabbing my ankle and seeing how far over my head he could bend my leg. It wasn't very far, but he was still able to draw all sorts of conclusions from it.

"I asked you in here," he said as he sat down, "on account of your gait." I looked at him. "You shuffle," he explained.

"I know that."

"It has me worried."

"Oh, I can explain that-"

"See, you walk just like someone with Parkinson's. In fact, it's almost a textbook example. Has nobody ever mentioned this to you before?"

"No, I can't say that they have. But you see-"

"That surprises me. It's a textbook shuffle, especially stooped over like that, of someone with advanced Parkinson's disease."

"Well, that may be the case," I finally snuck in, "but it's a coincidence." I went on to explain that I walked that way around his office because it was dim and crowded and there were a lot of things stacked in the hallway. I was just doing what I could to avoid kicking anything.

"I don't walk this way all the time," I assured him.

"And you have no other symptoms? A tremor in the hands, your legs getting really sore when you walk, or anything like that?'

"Not regularly, no. But my neurologist is right down the hall here, and he just had me get another MRI a couple weeks ago. I'm sure if there was any threat of Parkinson's he'd let me know about it." (To be honest, though, with that neurologist I'm not so sure-but I wanted to get on my way.)

"Okay," he said, "so you have someone following that already. Good. Because I was going to refer you to a neurologist right now if you didn't."

"No, that's okay. And I appreciate your noticing."

"Well, if anyone asks you if you have Parkinson's, now you'll know why."

"I sure will."

I thanked him again and left the office. After I got home I called Morgan to let her know what I'd found out. Then I had a smoke, opened the first beer of the day, and made myself a sausage sandwich. I didn't feel so bad at all.