Thursday Expressions: Talking the Doctor Out of a Colonoscopy, My Dear Sweet Love, and Blind Willie McTell

Oh My Dear. Oh My Dear Sweet Love 2022. Acrylic on canvas, 16 x 20"

First doctor visit in a looong time, and I spent most of my appointment to her office shaking my head “No” to the prospect of a colonoscopy. That’s a story for another time, and one I’ll probably never write about. Let’s just say that I’m a stickler for the Hippocratic Oath. I realize lives can be lengthened for some people, if they desire twilight sleep and colon-probing with tiny cameras and razor blades. Lives can be longer too if people stop driving in cars or eating cheeseburgers. But first, do no physical or mental harm, and psychologically, this neurotic can wait until he’s dead to have a stranger get paid to collect his polyps.
Meanwhile, nearly 17 million colonoscopies are “performed” in the United States annually, at an average cost of $3,000 a procedure.
That’s big money. Ralph Emerson wrote that “life is unnecessarily too long”. He lived 79 years without any length of colonoscope worming up his rectum.
For this lessor philosopher, me, I’ll double my ration of steel cut oats and leave the cream inside the cows.

After the doctor, I came home and made the painting, talked to my Dad on the phone (He’s had like 30 colonoscopies), stir fried mushrooms with brown rice noodles, and played this song (and others) with Rose. Blind Willie McTell died of a stroke at age 61. They say if he adhered to his recommended colonoscopy regimen, he would have died of a stroke at age 61.