By J. Lee Austin
Like most, I had no idea what I wanted to be when I grew up. Abruptly leaving home at the wet age of eighteen due to an abusive step-father, I had no plan. Didn’t even know there was such a thing as a plan … color me aimlessly adrift in a vast sea of deep ignorance … try painting that!
Toiling away at factory jobs and laboring in the construction industry was my primitive survival strategy, but the heavy boredom factor kept me going back to school. While I didn’t know exactly what to be, I knew it wasn’t those.
As fate would have it, I was lucky enough to meet some fine folks who took a shine to me and were flexible enough to let me work part-time, alternating work days with class days, all of which would change with semesters. Utilizing this seat-of-the-pants approach I was able to squeeze four years of college into eight.
Towards the end of it, I still hadn’t made a career choice … just kept taking classes in subjects I found the most interesting, like biology and chemistry. That all changed in a blink when my lab partner returned from interviewing for medical school.
“How did it go, John?”
“Dude, you gotta apply to med school. You won’t believe the idiots they’re lettin’ in.”
Sure enough, your favorite idiot applied and got accepted. So with cowgirl wife and precious toddler in tow, it was off to Lubbock, home of the fighting Texas Tech Red Raiders and All Guns Up!
Leaving the lush, green rolling hills and thickety pines of east Texas for the stark brown, dry flatness of CapRock country was a real boot to the head, spurs and all. Apocalyptic dust storms did not help smooth the transition.
All that said, I soon learned to love the place, which was not far from Shallow Water, Brownfield and Muleshoe. Creative namers those tiny town founders were not, but the people of west Texas were some of the most genuine, friendly and kindest anywhere.
Well, except for the bar owners with a strict no-biker policy who threw me out because of my Harley-Davidson tee-shirt. Never mind that I had never had anything to do with a Harley … or that my dear mother had given me the shirt because she thought it was pretty, if not some gaudy, pink, biker bling.
Hey don’t hate, I was your prototypical dirt-poor med student who would have worn Josie and the Pussycats for the right price of zero. Eventually they offered to let me stay in the bar if I would turn the shirt inside-out. I respectfully declined, based on principles, those elusive things I figured I could someday afford to get.
The first day of med school was an honest-to-god horror show, no way around it. They smartly put Gross Anatomy right up front on the curriculum schedule so as to shake out the weak hands, which worked to perfection. Out of about eighty, ten threw in the towel on day one. More would soon holler “Calf-rope!” and follow them out the door.
Can’t blame them … you descended into a freakish white tile/sterling steel basement reeking of formaldehyde to be confronted by twenty, waxy gray corpses getting cranked slowly up out of their shiny, metal holding tanks, dripping the juices of their pickling bath, ready to be dissected every way from Sunday by starry-eyed greenhorns with no measurable skills. It was surreal … or unreal … or both.
In the beginning we were all varying degrees of nauseated, but quickly adjusted, with some even choosing to eat lunch down there. I never got that comfy with it … my squeamish appetite bluntly refused to accompany me to such a macabre picnic.
Before the course began, we were given a very stern lecture about respecting the bodies of the generous people who had selflessly donated themselves to science. Even though we were clearly warned about the harsh consequences for such behavior, there were still those middling goofballs who would damn the rules and ethics to proceed full speed ahead with their stupid human tricks.
Early on, one of the dimmer bulbs passed slowly by our station with a wry smile and a rather indecorous body part in his lab coat pocket. Dr. Dimwit would then slither slyly around the lab, giving brief glimpses of his verboten prize, much to our utter shock and petrified surprise.
He got suspended, albeit only temporarily. Most of us felt like he should have been taken to the woodshed and then sent summarily home to ponder alternative careers like chicken herder or duck plucker.
I learned a lot about doctors that day and would be fully educated on them in the years to come. Don’t get me wrong … there are some very good docs out there who sincerely care about helping the patient. Sadly these are a tiny minority, as we learned from the CovidCon … when most of them fell right in line with the evil plan of executing the greatest Psychological Operation in history … for money. It’s still hard to fathom the monumental avarice, mendacity and shame of it all. We’re gonna need a bigger woodshed, Quint.
The end result of course was the deadening and sickening of countless innocents, which continues to this day. We can only begin to talk about a great awakening once the Injection-from-Hell is banned, not recommended.
The silver lining of the scam is that now we know who those doctors are … and conversely the good ones who did not play the sinister game. Don’t even get me started on hospitals, all of which should have signs posted like the neighborhood swimming pool …
“No life guard on duty, enter at your own risk.”
Best of luck to all, especially those navigating the treacherous waters of so-called modern health care, ~~ Doc
“Never go to a doctor whose office plants have died.” ~~ Erma Bombeck
