The doctor is in

I woke up today and my heart is still filled with sadness; my brain occupied with tragic thoughts of war.

 I need to give myself a break, so I'll try to write a light-hearted, funny post, and when I only get three charity "like" clicks and one or  two comments, I'll have an excuse to feel... sadness all over again??

Combine those feelings with the mixed(mostly guilty) ones about my born again religiousity, and it's no wonder I'm a bit of a hot mess.

 I HAVE to stop feeling like a hypocrite.

 I had an American  flag on lawn for at least a month after 9/11, but did  eventually taking it down, or refusing to wear a future MAGA hat, make me less patriotic?  

I AM still Jewish, even after eating jumbo shrimp in the Thai place last Saturday, because jumbo shrimp's delicious and also, an oxymoron.

So now I'm making a random segue to rant about... doctors.

Not the GOOD Marcus Welby/Joel Fleischman kind who love their jobs, or the many friends I have on Facebook that are compassionate physicians.

 I'm talking about the type I personally attract.

I attract doctors who shrug their shoulders, tell me to lose weight, write a scrip for something useless, and then bill my insurance company for something like $8,966.66.

I've been letting this itchy scalp drive me to madness--the kind of madness that makes me blog about personal, TMI stuff that I shouldn't be sharing, but when it started pairing with hair loss and itchy ears, I decided to call a highly recommended dermatologist.

I expected a diagnosis of something gross that nobody can spell, like eczema or psoriasis, or that I'd be told that my hair is too fat and NEEDED to do some shedding.

I dreaded even being in this  particular medical building..last time I was here was for a colonoscopy a few years ago, where the smug doctor came into his office and told me I had IBS, and then I told him that I did NOT, in fact, have that, because I was NOT a seventy two year old man named Jose Reyes, the chart he was currently looking at.

No, this doctor--the dermatologist--was pleasant enough, but geez, Louise!!  

The amount of paper work I had to complete just to be seen was obscene!

I waited in the exam room for twenty minutes, bored out of my itchy mind, afraid to get up and find something to read, because knowing me, I'd be caught snooping through Jose Reyes' chart again.

Then I thought I answered the new patient form incorrectly, checking "no" for the "history of anxiety" question, because I was getting just that,  anxious, waiting for my scheduled appointment, you know, when the doctor walks in, shrugs her shoulder, examines you for ten seconds without any instruments, and tells you "it's dandruff, but that doesn't mean you're unhygienic or unclean"

Dandruff????  

I'm not seeing snowflakes..I might BE a snowflake..but that crap's not coming out in my brush!

Dandruff???

I filled out a tome the size of the "Grey's Anatomy" physician's desk reference in the lobby  so you could tell me what a bottle of Head n Shoulders I bought from CVS would tell me?

Would I have to fill out five-ten pages of medical history to get something at friggin' CVS??

(No..only the receipt would be that length)

The form asked totally irrelevant stuff like, "have you EVER had depression?"

("Yes..I lived through 9/11, this awful week, and I'm spending my morning filling out this form")

Did I EVER have a stomach ache? Skin rash?  Fungus?

Or worse, did anyone in my FAMILY EVER have a toe fungus or  anxiety or depression?

(Tell ya what, doc..let me go find stuff to conduct a seance with, and I'll ask my Dad, who died in 1989, if he was depressed when the Flyers lost the Stanley Cup that playoff year)

Seriously??  You need to know about my mental health history?

OK..I attracted sociopaths in my twenties... I was an insecure, pathetic idiot..what's that have to do with my current  itchy scalp?

Again, this doctor was perfectly pleasant after her ten second exam and her eight minute clinical definition of what dandruff is, but I walked out of there unsatisfied and itchy.

(Like I did with those aforementioned sociopaths I attracted in my twenties.)

She wrote a scrip for a medicated shampoo that is the consistency of cold angel hair pasta.  It doesn't lather up and it is not going to result in people walking by me, sniffing my head and smiling and saying, "Gee..Your Hair Smells Terrific"..the shampoo I used in my twenties that apparently attracts bad guys.

This  product would result in a chorus of, "Gee..Your Hair Smells Mediocre"

Okay, enough Detail about my Day at the Dermatologist.

Reliving the Details makes my skin crawl, but I hope it made you chuckle..for once..this week.

Also, I am not using the angel hair spaghetti  shampoo when we go to Mexico in December.

  Assuming we're not kidnapped at the airport, I need the sulfate-free kind.

One that works with the chemical  straightening treatment I plan to get before the trip.  There's enough to worry about in Cancun, I don't want to concentrate on unruly cowlicks.

I'm hoping I wrote my own cure for the blues today..

Now if I could just refrain from turning on the TV...