Actually, I have had several appointments just this last week and tomorrow morning I will see the urologist again for he detected an infection.  This will not do for tomorrow afternoon I will be in Aventura Hospital being prepped for an invasion of my right carotid artery to take place around eleven a.m. on Tuesday. I trust the antibiotics I have ingested since a shot and three pills will have squashed that infection.  The other doctors will attend to cutting my neck and removing plaque and an “ulcer” from that artery they noticed last fall.  It is all very interesting how they will do this but I do not want to think about it.

What this THINKING ALLOWED is all about is doctors’ appointments and to let you know that I will be out of the THINKING ALLOWED business for about a week.  I think I will take my sketching materials with me so I can pass the time interestingly rather than look at TV and be subjected to examinations by all sorts of hospital personnel.  If you come to visit, (but I advise against it) perhaps I could persuade you to sit while I try to be normal and sketch your left profile.  Now, how will that work out?  I will have a stiff right side of my neck while I do your left profile. Anyway, I THINK I will try to do this.

I suppose that if I am to live into my nineties that I will have a great many more doctors’ visits.  If I remember correctly, my mother was constantly taking me to the doctor for one thing or another.  There were abscesses in my ears that made a great impression on me.  Tonsils were removed and I had the usual diseases of childhood (in those days) like measles, chicken pox and later on pneumonia at least five times. Then there were the cuts, bruises but no broken bones although I caused a lot of anxiety for being adventurous and going where no grown person would think of going.

From childhood on I have had this perfectly rational fear of needles.  I am needle phobic.  I had all the work done on my teeth WITHOUT Novocain injected in my gums.  This fact is usually received with fear and loathing by people I tell this to, but I refuse needles whenever I can.

I will let the doctors and nurses do with me what they will.  They were schooled and passed their courses and received their grades and I hope I will get people with experience rather than students working on my body.  I trust that being operated on by the Chief of cardiac surgery will be meaningful for he did the left side last April.  So, goodbye for now and wish me luck.