Month: October 2022

I marvel every day at God’s incredible creation all around me, but when I get to heaven, I have a few questions for the Almighty. One of them will be, what was He thinking when He created bees? Oh, I know they pollinate the flowers and all that nature stuff, but God could have designed any number of bugs that could do that. Why did he have to give that assignment to these ill-tempered, scary buzzers with the miniature swords protruding from their backsides?

The front of our house is lined with azalea bushes. In the spring they bloom into the most beautiful pink blossoms. Sadly, the blooms only last about two or three weeks. However, the leafy bushes grow like wildfire all summer long. By August my azaleas have all grown into each other and formed a tangled mess of foliage. It’s time to drag myself out there to trim them up, rake out the clippings, bag them and take them to the street for pick-up. Usually it’s just a dreary job that takes about three hours of back aching work.

This year was a little different.

I had finished trimming about two thirds of the bushes with my electric trimmer, when I bent down to get the lower branches on one of the plants closest to the house. Suddenly I felt a stinging pain on my leg. It was a hot day and I was wearing shorts and a T-shirt. I jerked upward and discovered to my horror that I was surrounded by a swarm of bees. Angry bees at that. As I flung my trimmer and bolted out of the hedge, I was stung several times all over my body. They got me just beside the ear, both hands and both arms, on the back and on the leg.

Thankfully, I’m not one of those folks who has a toxic reaction to bee stings, but for about two hours I just hurt all over. It was like my brain couldn’t sort out which pain signal to acknowledge, so it just sort of rotated all the messages. Eventually, the pain subsided. Several of the stings swelled up a bit but at least they didn’t hurt any more. I thought I was past the worst of it. I was wrong.

Once the pain subsides, the itching begins. Relentless itching. I poured on all the creams and ointments, nothing helped. I only survived thanks to the blessings of Advil and Tylenol. I was miserable for about two days but felt better after a steroid shot from my doctor.

The bees had declared war, and I was willing to accept the challenge, so long as somebody else actually did the fighting of course. My daughter recommended a pest control guy whom I called. He came out the same day. His first question was “What kind of bees are they?” I calmly told him I was too busy shrieking bloody murder to stop and get a good description. I just pointed to the shrubs and whimpered “they’re in there somewhere.”

These bug guys tend to be very nice people, but they are either extremely brave, or just a little crazy. Without hesitation, he strutted into the shrubbery and started kicking the individual plants, hoping to roust up the bees and discover their home. Suddenly he darted out of the landscaping faster than a speeding bullet. “Found them!” he proclaimed. Sure enough, they were flowing like a river out of a chipmunk hole at the base of one of the shrubs, the one I was trimming when I got attacked. “Yellowjackets” he explained. “They love to nest in chipmunk holes, and stuff like vibrations really get them mad.”

Oh, you mean like the vibration of an electric trimmer shaking their world? That kind of vibration? Good to know. A little late, but good to know.

He said he was going to poison the hole with some sort of white powder. He told me to stay inside the house during the procedure. No problem. Way ahead of you. Afterward, he showed me the hole, as the bees were busily sampling the powder and, hopefully, taking some for the queen to sample. The bug man said the whole colony should be dead in a few days. Just give it some time.

That was in August. I’m giving it time. Plenty of time. Meanwhile, if you happen to drive by my house, please forgive the look of the front landscaping. The bushes are only about half trimmed. I’m working up the courage to get back out there and finish the job.

Maybe by Christmas.

The other day I received the quarterly report from my health insurance provider. It itemized the various medical visits I had made for the past three months. As I browsed through the items, I began to realize that I am accumulating quite an impressive portfolio of specialists. Of course, I have a general practice physician, which is where it all begins.

But over the years I seem to have branched out, and my medical tree now has a lot of branches. I have a neurologist, a urologist, a podiatrist, a dermatologist, an otolaryngologist, a physical therapist and a periodontist. Wow. Now that I’ve actually typed that list, I’m a bit amazed that I consider myself a generally healthy person.

We definitely live in an age of medical specialty. It wasn’t always so. Among the enduring memories of my childhood are my visits to our family doctor. His name was Dr. Fisher. He was a bit of a portly man with a gray moustache and wire rim glasses across his nose. He had a jolly laugh and always, I mean always, wore a stethoscope around his neck. I wonder if he slept in that thing.

His office smelled like formaldehyde. He had a figurine model of himself at the front of his desk, next to his name plate. Behind him was a bookshelf filled with medical journals that looked as though they were written in previous centuries. He would often refer to one of them when diagnosing my sickness. His examining room was about the size of a large closet, with room for a padded table and little else. There was a jar full of tongue depressors on the counter, but he never seemed to use them. There were large pictures on the walls of various body parts and bones. They were graphic enough to creep me out, and I tried not to look at them.

But what I remember most is that Dr. Fisher did it all. He treated headaches, tremors, broken bones, he stitched up cuts and bruises, cut the warts off your feet, treated the rash on your leg, gave you some balm to relieve the pain in your mouth after biting your tongue. No specialists needed here. If Dr. Fisher couldn’t handle it, it was time to go directly to the hospital.

My most vivid memory is the time I was playing tackle football with some friends in their backyard. As I lunged to tackle somebody, he rolled over my leg and I felt a terrible pain in my right foot. I removed my shoe and sock and was horrified to see my big toe standing straight up at a right angle to the other four. I went screaming home to show my mom, and shortly after, we got in the car for a trip to see the good doctor.

I remember sitting on his examining table, scared out of my wits. Was I in for major surgery? Would I lose the toe? Would I ever walk normally again? Dr. Fisher stared at my freakish looking toe for a moment, scratched his chin, and then without warning, he grabbed hold of it with his fist and yanked it straight down. I felt a pop, and a click. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to feel any pain. “There”, he said. “That oughtta do it”.

I looked down in amazement. All of my toes were once again properly aligned. The big toe was a little sore but it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. The doc would later explain to Mom that it was just a dislocation. I put my shoe on and traipsed out of there as though nothing had happened.

From that point on, I had a new appreciation of Dr. Fisher. I felt as though he was kind of a miracle worker, a super hero. You just don’t find that kind of all purpose, country doctor anymore.

About fifty years later, I had a bad fall off my bicycle. My right shoulder took the brunt of my impact with the road. It hurt badly, and I noticed my shoulder bone was protruding a little higher. This time it was my wife Sharon taking me to the emergency room, where the doctor said my scapula had been slightly displaced. As he worked on it, I was perfectly calm. Not a whimper or a groan. I’d been through this before.

Dr. Fisher would have been proud.