4/14 At the doctor’s in Newburgh, some ear infection. It’s a bungalow, crowded with as many staff as patients. Elderly, frail, though many too sick for their age. The staff, most of them young women, crammed in the area behind the front desk, are more upbeat than unnerved, and a printed sheet on the wall makes it very clear that socializing during working hours is strictly prohibited and grounds for immediate termination. Even if I had been better at not showing a German frown on my face, or that Manhattan impatience while waiting in line, my health insurance would have given me away. The receptionist looks at it as if stumbling on a rare gemstone. No deductible, she gasps. That’s a good insurance.

The infection makes it so I can hear my own heartbeat, a kind of hissing woosh every second, when it’s quiet around me. Although it’s most likely an inner ear thing – that is, after all, where it hurts – they check all my blood vessels, starting with the carotid artery, and also my heart. Gargling, whooshing sounds coming out of the ultrasound machines, one of which they seem to have in every examination room, as if it was an all-purpose device from Star Trek. There’s a hint of plaque on the walls of the artery, and two darker spots in my thyroid which shouldn’t be there, though most likely benign. My heart is beating quite beautifully. 

I should come back in a week to have the thyroid checked out in more detail, and I’m well inclined to do it, rather than consulting a Manhattan specialist.