How Are You Today?

 It always cracks me up that when I go to any doctor's office, I'm greeted with the question, "How are you today?"

Doesn't it occur to them that I'm in the office because I'm not well?

I understand it's a simple greeting, but seriously, they could come up with a better one for a doctor's visit where I'm clearly suffering from something. 

"Come in and tell us how you're feeling" springs to mind.

"How can I help you today" is another reasonable alternative.

"Let's see if we can figure out what's going on" would be encouraging.

Hospital ERs are especially egregious with the obvious Duhs.

I once had a gallstone attack so severe, that I couldn't stand up when they called my name. I slid to the floor, curled into a ball and crying. The woman holding her little clipboard watched me writhe in agony and said, "Do you need help?" I suppose she expected me to crawl behind her.

Another time, I broke my foot (one of many times I fractured something in my foot) and used crutches to get into the ER, my bruised and swollen foot on display. The tech asked, "So what brings you in today?" I was tempted to say it was my gallstones.

Today was a 6-month check-up with the oncologist. I had a double mastectomy in 2019 to remove three kinds of cancer. I literally have no clue what's inside my chest other than the foobs. But the tech asked, "How are you doing?" I said, "That's what I'm here to find out." Then the oncologist asked, "So what's going on?" How am I supposed to know what's going on? It's not like I can get a mammogram to screen for a cancer recurrence. I said, "That's what I'm here to find out."

Actually, a lot's been going on. Soaring blood-pressure bouts, COVID (who knows which variant), after-effects of COVID, shortness of breath, swollen legs, inflamed lymph node in my neck and right armpit, pain in the hip, and sudden weight gain, all of this within the last five months. 

But tests and scans and probes and other hoops to jump through show nothing's wrong with me. The oncologist said, "See you in six months."

Obviously, I'm doing just fine. How are you?