cakewalk

Dangling from the tree branch a foot above my head, the fat gray squirrel narrows its hard, shiny black eyes at me. With a mighty thud, it drops to the deck, snarling at my foot before finally dashing away.

“Aaaaa!” I bellow as I wave my arms after it. “Stupid fat gray squirrel! You scared the crap out of me!”

My outburst terrifies a nearby blue jay, which darts into the air, screeching obscenities. I wave the garden hose at it threateningly.

“You want a piece of me?” I taunt.

And then I remember the cavalry: three malicious blue jays that assume Triforce formation as they perch on the roof, watching me go to and fro between the back door and the laundry room. If I am singing, they will fly around me, cawing. Heaven forbid I be carrying the laundry basket under my arm. The blue jays are the only law ’round here. While I may feel brave with the hose in my hands now, I know that they will avenge the insult within the hour – and I am afraid. I return to watering the plants.

A moment passes. The blue jay dives at me. The squirrel reappears with three buddies. There is a bee hovering maybe two inches from my nose. And I have just witnessed a spider crawl up the leg of my pants. Who am I kidding? “Afraid?” As if – I’m quaking in my five-year-old, semi-rotten flip-flops. I yelp as I nearly step on a dead dragonfly being dissected by a few dozen ants.

It seems that I am terrified, which makes no sense. These things do not frighten me. I reassess the situation: I am irritated. No, not just irritated; I am furious. Here I am, taking care of the house while my family is away for the week, and my neighbors are playing silly games.

I finish the watering and stomp inside.

My cat is playing with a silly toy mouse on the rug, and I smile. She’s such a cutie.

I am sitting in my pediatrics office for the last time. Yes, I know, I have been 18 for a while now and yet I’ve been back to my childhood doctor’s office twice already. But this visit is final, if not primarily because I am off to college in a month, then because the new doctor reminds me of Doug on King of Queens. Not just “reminds” me – he must be. He is built like Doug. He walks like Doug. He even wears cologne that smells just as I would imagine Doug smelling. In short, he IS Doug…with a doctorate. This frightens and confuses me.

My mother has been researching what my ailment might be, considering that two EEG’s, a complete cardio work-up, and multiple blood tests have revealed nothing. So she walks up to Dr. Doug with a bunch of computer print-outs and declares that I must have some kind of vestibular disorder, aka. ear trouble. I sit around as she blathers. Doug kind of spaces out. Then he does the usual things new doctors do when they hear about my problem….he checks my eyes and ears and turns back to my mother.

“What are her symptoms?” he asks her.

Hi, I’m over here. But, alright, he’s a kid doctor; I’ll cope.

“She’s dizzy and lightheaded,” my mother tells him. “She’s had some fainting spells, and she was diagnosed with labyrinthitis last month. But she finished her medication for that and it didn’t go away. It just seems to be getting worse over the years.”

“Hm…is it a room spinning kind of dizzy?”

“I…don’t know.”

“No,” I declare from my corner of the room. “I just feel really lightheaded and weak. My vision goes black and my arms get really warm.”

Doug looks at me for the first time.

“Movie fade-out kind of black?”

“Yeah.”

“Hm.” Mumble mumble. Scribble scribble.

“So…?”

“Okay.”

Dude, “okay” what?

His questions continue. I recite the same list of symptoms and explanations that I have rattled off more than a dozen times in the past six years. Mumble mumble. Scribble scribble. Doug is starting to annoy me: he offers no conjectures, no possibilities. He just mumbles and scribbles, and then he stops both and sends for a nurse to check my blood pressure three times, while I’m lying down, sitting up, and standing. She makes me lean against the wall for fear I can’t tell if I’m going to fall over.

My mother asks for a referral so that her insurance will cover the physical therapy. He stares blandly. Physical therapy, mom? He never agreed with your conclusion. But, then, Dougie doesn’t really have any ideas of his own. We all start to leave, and then:

“Oh, and by the way – she was diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder when she was younger, and they mentioned something about ‘vestibular’ something-or-other. Does that add anything to this?”

No. SID isn’t medically accepted. It isn’t “provable.” You know that.

It’s obvious that he barely knows what she’s talking about.

“I don’t…think so…” he says cheerfully.

As we stand at the window to pay, the doctor walks over to answer the receptionist’s question about a referral. He looks at the computer screen and furrows his brow. Oh my God, he looks just like Doug! He is so awesome.