Shelburne Falls, 2023 — Some medical turmoil in my life was recently relieved by voices in my head that lead me to a dog that bit me on my rump.
I say voices, but, unlike that incident on my bike 50 years ago where the voice was almost audible, these weren’t so clear in diction but were perfectly clear in intent. They were from somewhere other than my rational mind and urged me to take steps other than what I’d planned.
My Medical Turmoil
I try to avoid our health care system as much as I can, preferring if at all possible to keep my self healthy with diet, exercise, good thoughts and the like. It’s not like I don’t believe in all the amazing medical technology we have, but rather don’t trust the profit-oriented system we have of delivering that technology to people.
Nor do I fully accept the body-as-a-machine model of our medical technology and do think there is a powerful mental aspect to our health. However, I’m not a fanatic and did have a doctor and used him when needed for some small thing or another.
Except a bigger thing started to happen. My heart, with even slight exercise such as my daily walks, would sometimes jump to double time, from a normal 60-70 beats per minute (BPM) to 120-140. If I stopped, took a deep breath, it would soon slow down. But it was worrisome.
Well, I’m not going to go into the details, but my doctor at the time provided some very unsettling care looking into this making me more and more certain I didn’t want anything to do with our medical system.
I had earlier made some attempts to find another doctor, but due to various issues with local practices closing, hospital budgets, staffing, whatever, there were no general practitioners (GPs) taking new patients.
So I decided to take myself to a higher spiritual plane and not worry about it. To accept whatever my Karma delivers. To open myself to the Universe and proceed on my normal walks. And I walked with that sense of inner peace and…, wait, is that my heart again? I stopped and took my pulse. OK, relax. Normal again, resuming my peaceful walk and… wait, is it going again?
I was compulsively checking my pulse every few minutes as I walked.
It seems I wasn’t on as high a spiritual plane as I thought.
Having convinced Nancy (my wife) not to push me into the medical system, I confided in a nurse friend, who immediately pushed me to drop my current doctor (she knew of him) and find a good GP to help me get to the bottom of this. But she didn’t know of any who were taking new patients.
Sigh. So there I was, not wanting to get deeper into the medical system, but knowing I had to, and sensing how difficult it would be to even find someone taking new patients let alone one who was reasonable good and remotely close to where we lived. Tomorrow I’ll start looking in earnest.
I woke up the next morning with the need to act weighing heavy on me. I did nothing. I knew I had to start looking. But didn’t. I knew I needed a doctor, but that there were none to be found. It got to be late in the afternoon and I’d still done nothing.
The Voices
Distracted by it all, I decided to go on my walk and get out before it started to get dark. That’s when I first was aware of the voice. My room was a bit cluttered and it told me to make my bed. Huh? I had to get out. It said I didn’t have to clean up more, just do that one task, for that amount of time before starting.
I was in a distressed state and didn’t argue. Made the bed and then started out on my walk.
Let me tell you about my walk. I always go out the front door and head North walking to the edge of our village. From there, sometimes I would loop around the village clockwise, or go over a bridge over our river and loop back counter clockwise, or continue straight for a circuit around a local cemetery.
Always starting North and one of those three.
The voice said go South. Huh? I never start to the South. It strongly suggested I go South. Well, OK, I might do that for a change and I could go over the Iron Bridge downtown and loop up by the old Lamson factory and head towards Cricket field. So I did.
When I got to Cricket field, that voice told me sit on a bench in the gazebo there. Note that I never stop and sit on my walks. But I did. And sat for a little while, until it was clear it was time to get up and head back home.
The Dog
Now at one point on the walk back I would be walking along a sidewalk between a road and the river, with some plantings at some parts. As I was approaching that area I saw a young (to me) family headed towards me. A man, his wife, a stroller and two rather rambunctious dogs.
For most of that section of the sidewalk, there was room between the sidewalk and river for them to give me a wide berth with the dogs. But we met precisely where a tree forced us to squeeze closer in order to pass.
He was wrestling the dogs between the stroller and the tree, as I approached staying on the sidewalk. After I just passed them I felt the teeth of one of the dogs biting me on the rump!
“God damn, fucking A, your dog just bit me!”
I was really pissed. They apologized. I’m thinking, great, do we need to check for rabies and whatever. He, the man, said his dogs were vaccinated, but it wouldn’t be a problem if the bite didn’t break the skin.
I was still pretty angry, and couldn’t see my own butt, but I do like to settle things quickly and don’t like our legal system any better than our health care system. So I made him an offer. I would go around behind a car with him, show him my butt, and he’d tell me if it broke the skin. Fair enough, and he told me it wasn’t a problem because, wait for it, he was a doctor.
The Doctor
Well, the skin wasn’t broken. He offered to give me his contact information, and I said I was still pissed his dog bit me, it stung some but not too much and they seemed nice people so I was fine with letting it drop.
It did register that he was a doctor, but I just thought he was one of these specialists and not one of interest to me. I went on my way.
How about that, I was stressed about finding a doctor, heard voices that lead me directly to an interaction with a doctor, and I still didn’t get it. More magic was needed.
Now Matt is a neighbor and a professional dog walker. We’re friendly, but never actually spend any time talking, but on that walk back on that particular day I wound up on the same street with him going the same way.
I said, “Matt, you won’t believe what just happened to me” and told him about the dog bite. He asked about the dog, I described it, and it turns out he knew the dog and the couple and walked their dogs for them sometimes.
He said he’s a primary care doctor, and a good one, with a new and growing practice.
Well I’ll be… I figured it was destined he should be my doctor so I looked him up, sent him a letter with this story in it and asked if he would accept me as a patient. He said yes.
If the voices hadn’t gotten me on a different walk, and induced those delays, it wouldn’t have happened. I wouldn’t have been at that exact narrow spot where the dog could have a nip at me. And what a surgically precise nip it was. Enough to hurt and piss me off, but not enough to puncture either my skin or my jeans.
What a wonderfully timed, beneficial incident. The dog knew better than both of us that I had a rump that needed to be bitten just that hard at just that moment.
Epilog
This doctor was perfect for me, wanted to be in primary care to help people get the care they need. This is not where the money is in medicine. He understood perfectly my desire to have as little “health care” as possible, and also my desire to have a doctor as an advisor, letting me know my options, but not “telling” me what to do, but outlining my choices.
He had a bunch of tests done, we did some thinking, and it turns out I might have triggered the heart issues when I decided to eliminate the thyroid medicine I was taking, so I started taking it again, and the number of incidents of a racing heart have greatly diminished.
Who knows how my health will progress, and our health care system evolve, but I feel I have at least one good doctor to provide a bridge between the two for me.
Sometimes all you need is a good bite on the ass... wait
That was fun. Thanks!