I walked into Student Health Services feeling slightly ill. I had a cough, a stomach ache and a bump on my head from jumping into the ceiling from my bed. I didn’t think it was anything serious, but I figured it would be best to get checked out by professionals.
After filling out the sign-in sheet and “What Is It This Time?” form, I took a seat in one of the many chairs. A male student sat across from me, itching at his many red spots. Slightly resembling that of a coked-out giraffe, his sickly demeanor encouraged me to find seating elsewhere.
I found a vacant seat at least 10 feet from the other diseased students visiting Health Services, and I began to read some uninteresting literature on safe sex. In the distance, I heard a female voice loudly cry, “What do you mean I have typhoid fever?” I did not overhear the doctor’s response. The itchy giraffe-man stood up and ran out of Health Services, saying to himself, “I’d rather sleep it off,” as he made a beeline to the automatic doors.
A nurse called me in to one of the vitals-testing centers, which looked just like an office cubicle. She asked me if I had recently had my period, to which I replied I’m a man. She stared at me a moment, as if I did not sufficiently answer the question. With a sigh, I told the young nurse, no, I haven’t. She wrote down my response and handed me a brochure on safe sex.
I told her my symptoms, and she nodded and wrote notes I could not make out. “Have you been drinking?” she asked. I said no — it was only noon. She punched me in the stomach and asked me if that hurt. I said yes. She jotted something down, making a loud “Tsk, tsk,” sound. I believe she whispered something about leukemia, but I can’t be sure.
The nurse proceeded to record my vitals. After taking my temperature, timing my pulse and poking my nose with the cap of her pen, she wrote down some notes and sent me to one of the offices.
Fifteen minutes after I first sat down on the wax-paper seating, a man with a stethoscope around his neck opened the door. He seemed to be in the middle of a discussion.
“Well, I am a real doctor, young man, so I think I know what I’m talking about when I say it needs to be cut off,” he said, slamming the door shut.
He turned, took one look at me, and reopened the door. “Nurse,” he said with brain-surgeon authority, “I’m going to need another stethoscope, stat.”
The doctor sat on a low stool and rolled toward me as if he were going to help me put on some new shoes. “Okay, Mr. . . . Patraz, what do we have here?” he asked, reading the nurse’s notes.
Before I could respond, the doctor punched me in the stomach and noted my response. He quickly tongue-depressed me, felt my throat and pushed on my bump with his pen.
“Have you been around any rare African spiders recently?” he asked, with a grave look on his face.
“No,” I replied. He nodded, punched me in the stomach and hammered my knee.
“Does your stomach hurt when I punch it?” The doctor impatiently waited for an answer as I struggled to breathe. “Trouble breathing?” he said. I nodded, unable to vocally tell him he had knocked the wind out of me.
“Well, Mr. Potsrice, it’s this humble doctor’s opinion that you either have mono or death cancer, or an Australian trap-door spider is loose in your apartment and bit you in the head. Where is that gosh-darn nurse with my gosh-darn stethoscope?”
I shook with horror; the wax paper crinkled. “Are you sure?” I asked, hoping he wasn’t.
“Well, you may only have a cold and a bump, but in my experience the simplest answer is never the right one,” the doctor said as he lit up a cigarette. He offered me one. I told him I don’t smoke.
“I don’t think you have to worry about the dangers of smoking anymore,” he chortled, ashing his cig on the wax paper. “In case it is a ‘cold,’ I’ll give you a prescription for this special cold medicine that kills everything inside of you. If that doesn’t work or you die this week, you’ll know I’m right.”
I nodded, took the prescription and the number for an Australian trap-door spider hunter and thanked the doctor for his time. He shook my hand and gave me a brochure on safe sex.
The next day I woke up feeling great — no more sore throat, achy stomach or throbbing bump. I didn’t even use any of the medicine. I suppose the doctor at Health Services was completely wrong. Hm. Strange — I’ve never heard of a BU Health Services professional being wrong before now.
Zack Poitras, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences, is a weekly columnist for The Daily Free Press. He can be reached at [email protected].