There is an asymmetrical quality to illnesses: they are fascinating to the afflicted, rather less so to well, I don’t want to bore you, but on Thursday, February 11, I woke with a kidney stone. For a condition that was painful but not exactly life threatening, I ended up losing a lot of time and productivity, and consuming a fair amount of health care, including lithotripsy, a very high tech procedure in which I was bombarded with high-energy shock waves that passed through my body until they reached the kidney stones, which they shattered. But the most interesting part of the process was my pre-procedure talk with the anesthesiologist. She was a middle-aged South Asian woman, not manifestly someone who was nutty about keeping in shape, who in an almost bored way read to me the results of the tests and scans that I had undergone. “High blood pressure. . .elevated blood sugar. . .high potassium. . . slightly enlarged prostate. . . fatty liver. . .different-sized kidneys.” Her bland, matter-of-fact reading of my numbers and their shortcomings was eye-opening. It was like she was the GM of a baseball team and was evaluating an aging infielder with declining stats; the implicit question was `How do you expect me to keep you on the team?” She as concerned, she said; my blood pressure was loitering just below a point where it would be too dangerous to do the procedure. She wondered aloud whether to use general anesthesia or just sedate me. “Open your mouth” she ordered, and I complied. “Aha!” she said, “just as I thought: you have the worst kind of mouth for resuscitation!” The worst? Who knew humanity was even being judged that way? But now four doctors have admonished me to start taking care of myself, and I am complying. I would to go out with a bang, not slowly shepherded to the grave by an army of healers,
