You have nothing to worrEBOLAbout.
The wife and I always talk about “movie moments,” those bizarre/humorous/impossible experiences one would think are too bizarre/humorous/impossible to occur in real life.
Today I went to the doctor for my first physical in several years. Upon entering the large lobby area, I immediately noticed that the admins and nurses behind the wide counter were all wearing gloves and disposable surgical masks. I’d been to this place numerous times before and knew it wasn’t the norm. When it was my turn to check in at the counter, I was standing beside a woman also checking in with the second admin.
My admin began asking me a string of prepared questions, “Have you traveled outside the country in the past three weeks? Have you interacted with anyone who has traveled outside the country in the past three weeks? Have you, or anyone you live with, shown flu-like symptoms in the past few weeks…?”
In the middle of answering all this, the woman next to me asked her admin why they’re all wearing masks and gloves. “Is there something we should know about here? Should I be worried?”
“No ma’am,” she replied. “It’s just flu season.”
As I answered “No, no traveling,” the woman and I shared a skeptical glance.
And then the wall-mounted TV in the waiting area went from a commercial to a news brief: “Coming up at eleven, the nurse who contracted Ebola…”
I smirked. Another shared glance. We both looked at her admin who was just returning her attention from the TV. The admin looks at both of us and shrugged a “Yeah, okay, it’s Ebola.” shrug.
Movie moment.
In non-ebola news, in the middle of my physical, my aged, soft-spoken, Indian doctor finished checking my reflexes.
“This is all good,” he said. Now the lungs and heart.”
Cold stethoscope to exposed back. I was in one of those open-back napkins they call gowns.
“All good, too.”
He went to the counter and plucked some blue gloves from a box. As he was putting them on, he turned to me and said, “And now, the butt.”
My face must have drooped like a bloodhound.
He smiled subtly. “Just kidding you. Lay back, please.” And then proceeded to check my stomach and guts.
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