My Day at the Clinic

By Garrison Keillor

Health is the ultimate democracy, as every mortal knows, especially we squirrels who have gathered our nuts for the winter and been careful crossing busy streets. Many careful and industrious squirrels have died young, while rats and weasels have led long and happy lives. We tremble when we go to see the doctor, fearing that some terrible irony is about to be revealed.

I spent a few days at the Mayo Clinic recently, getting poked and probed, giving blood, peeing into a cup, coughing on command, listening for inaudible beeps over headphones, walking fast uphill on a treadmill as a young woman took my blood pressure, placing my left hand on her lovely shoulder, which drove my blood pressure up--and democracy was evident everywhere. Muslim women in elegant gray chadors sat whispering in the same waiting room with stolid farmers and their wives, geezers and geezerettes next to minor Pooh-bahs and nabobs yakking on cell phones. Snatches of French and German drifted by, and Japanese, and Minnesotan ("So you think it's going to be a long time then? Or no?"). And all of us praying the same continuous silent prayer to the Great Internist to let the tests come out clean and please no colonoscopy today.

Mayo is the Lourdes of the North, the Cape of Last Hope and Court of Mortality Appeals, known for its clientele of sheiks and kinglets and potentates and ailing tycoons and celebrities--Billy Graham was on the premises the day I went, having his medications adjusted--but it's a clinic that also serves a big swath of southern Minnesota, so when the Exalted Nawab of Lower Rawalpindi's 14th and 15th wives go in for a chest X ray, they sit and wait next to Ole and Lena from Spring Grove. And sitting and waiting is part of the Mayo experience. You tell all your interesting troubles to the examining physician, and he or she routes you to the appropriate shamans and gurus--to cardiology or the department of digital prostate examinations or the hiccup guy or the specialist in owliness--and it may take several days to get a thorough checkup, the emphasis being on thoroughness. It's a good idea to bring a book. Dante would be good, or the Book of Job.

I sat in a waiting room and saw a mother pushing a sweet little girl in a wheelchair. The girl wore a stocking cap, having lost her hair. An old man was called to the desk, accompanied by his son. A nurse explained to the son how to collect a stool sample. And then a stocky woman in white called my name and led me down the hall to an examining room and told me to strip to my shorts and don a small gown. She was friendly and matter of fact in the manner of small-town Lutherans, and I could imagine striking up a conversation about the weather and gardens and how fast summer goes by. When it comes my time to go, I imagine doing it in the company of Midwestern Lutheran women who will hold my hand at the end and say, "Boy, they say we're supposed to get two to three inches of rain tonight and we sure could use it but I don't know." And my dying words will be, "Yeah, it actually looks like it's clearing up some."

She padded away, and I sat for a few minutes in my gown, feeling mortal, the way you do if you're 57 and scantily clad, sitting in bright light. I could imagine that a pea-size tumor in my innards had sprouted and sent evil tendrils shooting through the lymph nodes, and now dense jungle growths had a grip on my vitals and in a few months people would sit in an Episcopal church and softly weep for me and then have a nice lunch. I was almost to the scattering of the ashes when the doctor walked in. He asked me how I was and I said fine. He sat down and perused the questionnaire I'd filled in.

It is pleasant to have someone concerned about you and your health. I was brought up to think about others, not about myself, and if the conversation should dwell on me, to change the subject quickly. But now, in the privacy of an examining room, I was accorded the great privilege of talking about me, my feelings and aches and what's happening here and here and down here, and the doctor was not so bored to hear about it. He found me interesting and looked into my eyes and my ears and my nose. He thumped my chest; he had me drop my drawers and asked, "Everything down here work O.K.?" Yes, I said, yes, yes, it does. But thank you for asking.

And that was the upshot of my story in Rochester. Aging male, out of shape ("deconditioned") but in pretty good shape for the shape I'm in. Knock, knock. I have the cholesterol levels of an 18-year-old, in case you're curious, which is highly unjust, considering the eggs and cheese and beef I've snarfed, the zero hours of aerobic exercise, and thank God for His Unjustice. Knock, knock. That is all I have to say on the subject at this time, and there will be no questions, thank you.