Old.

March 14, 2012

I had an appointment at the doctor today, just for a normal exam and a follow-up on my high blood pressure. (Who knew I would be the type of person to have high blood pressure, right?)

I was not very excited about this appointment due to the blood pressure thing and the getting weighed thing and the probably waiting on the doctor thing.

I had no idea.

I got there at 10:50 for an 11:00 appointment and checked in. It did not get past me that there were six women already seated in the waiting room, and they had ALL checked off my doctor’s name on the sign-in sheet. I sighed, found a seat, and mentally congratulated myself for remembering to bring my tablet, which has Amazon Kindle on it.

I checked in with my Facebook friends, asking them for meditative thoughts because I don’t typically handle waiting for late doctors very well, and since I was getting my blood pressure checked for more reasons than just record-keeping I was doing my best to smile (mentally of course: really smiling in that situation would have probably looked odd) and breathe while I waited.

I opened up my tablet and read for a while as the other ladies were called back. Finally, it was my turn.

It was 11:30.

Surprisingly, my blood pressure was not in the “high” category this time (thanks, medicine!); it sat comfortably in the “pre-hypertension” category, which is a huge improvement over the past two years.

The scale? That’s never good news, is it? We won’t talk about that.

I was taken into the exam room and given the gown, and I put it on when the nurse left. I grabbed my tablet and sat on the table.

FOR FORTY-FIVE MINUTES.

And darn it all, that forty-five minutes of peace and quiet, just reading, along with my doctor being super nice when she walked in just took the edge right off of the anger I felt towards the fact that this appointment was headed towards an epic length.

My exam went fine: I talked to my doctor about all of the things I worry about as a result of getting older, and she made me feel better, just like always. It might have something to do with the fact that we’ve had the same conversation for three years running.

Leaving the office, I grabbed the order for blood work from the receptionist and walked down the hall to the lab so I could get that out of the way immediately. While waiting to be called, I looked over the piece of paper in my hand and was totally shocked to find that *perhaps* the information wasn’t completely accurate.

My chin on the floor, I stared hard for a few minutes at this:

99years

Guess what? You are cordially invited to finish this post! Start with:

“And then I…”

Ready? GO.

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