Mousetrap

Have you ever read the children's book If You Give a Mouse a Cookie? It starts out like this: If you give a mouse a cookie, he's going to ask for a glass of milk. Then he'll ask for a straw. Then a napkin. And on and on and on. My recent dealings with the medical community have reinforced a view I've had for some time--that the medical world is a world of mice and cookies. Here's a story to illustrate.

A young woman--well maybe she was a well-preserved senior--happened to mention to her primary care doc that she had some ringing in her ears.

"How would you describe it?" asked the doc.

"It sounds like it's just in my left ear," she replied. "Though I can't be sure."

"Ringing in both ears is pretty common," said the doc. "But ringing in one ear could be a problem." And she wrote down the name of an ear, nose and throat doc and suggested the woman make an appointment to get it checked.

So an appointment was made for a hearing test.

"You've lost some hearing," said the young whippersnapper of an ear doc.

"Eh?" said the woman. I guess he'd heard that one before because he didn't acknowledge the humor.

"I want you to have another test to see how your brain is receiving sound impulses," he said. "It won't hurt."

So the dutiful young woman scheduled the second test and listened to beeping and buzzing while an auditory technician pounded away on a computer.

"Your right ear is questionable," the ear doc told her at her third visit, "but it's nothing to worry about. I'm going to order an MRI just to rule out a couple of things."

The young woman scheduled the MRI without delay because she knew she shouldn't question the decision of a young upstart who thinks he's old enough to practice medicine even though he can't possibly be old enough to shave.

In the meantime, the young woman sensed the sharp pain of newly-discovered arthritis in her finger. She decided this would be her little secret. She also decided--just in case the end of the world is nigh--to eat more cookies.