I have trouble making a doctor's appointment.  The only things that actually motivate me to go are constant badgering from my wife, fear of certain death, or both.

Last year I had a bad case of bronchitis.  I'd completely quit smoking weed even though I had some crazy purple indica at home.  My wife had hassled me for days to go to the doctor.  I was able to rationalize that "I'm a little better today, I think I turned the corner."  But I continued to keep getting sicker.  The final straw to go to the doctor happened at 10pm on Friday night.  I coughed several ounces of blood into the sink.  I understand that it was mixed with mucus and saliva, so it looked worse than it was, but it was fucking horrorshow.  I was at the urgent care at 8am Saturday morning.

I had the same Indian doctor who removed my MRSA boil from my ass months earlier.  He asked what brought me in.  I told him my wife had badgered me for a week to come in for a bad cough.  When he asked if that was all, I mentioned I hawked up an alarming volume of blood the night before, he told me in a courteous way that I was probably unqualified to make my own health care decisions and should do whatever my wife told me to do.  It was kind of a nice bedside manner method of calling me retarded.

Well, I'm going to have to make another doctor's appointment.  November 2009, I got thrown by a horse and badly broke my left arm.  During the process of trying to stay on the back of a galloping, bucking horse with Birkenstocks on, I got a little beat up.

The insides of my thighs were completely purple from bruising from my legs failing to grip the sides of the saddle.  When my feet came out of the Birks, for a moment I was laid completely flat on top of the horse with my head over its neck.  Its final buck, which put my feet straight up into the air, drove the saddle horn into my abdomen.  The saddle horn stabbed into me right above where my pubic hair is just to my right of midline.  It was an amazing bruise, perfectly round and almost jet black with purple highlights.  After my legs were back to their normal color, the abdominal bruise was still appalling.

My arm was so fucked up, I kind of ignored my other injuries.  I was falling head first and with knowledge of forethought, sacrificed my left arm so I wouldn't have to move my wheelchair by blowing through a tube.

In the last five months, I've lost 25 pounds.  That's right, since I got my medical marijuana license, I've lost 25 pounds and have gotten back in shape.  Maybe it's just me, but I'm (surprisingly) not following the "wash your box of pop-tarts down with a bag of cheetos" strategy to weed smoking. 

I recently caught another respitory thing from work.  My cough was bad, but not hemmorhage inducing.  But the combination of a bad cough and weight loss helped me discover a lingering injury from my horse-capade.  I have possibly the largest hernia on Earth in my abdomen. 

It is in the same location and is the exact same size and shape as my saddlehorn bruise.  It's a few inches in diameter and noticably bulges out when I cough.  It's gotten so bad that I have to press on it with my hand when I cough.  I overheard a story my coworker was telling about an old friend of hers that just got put in a medically induced coma from an untreated abdominal hernia.  After a few years, it caused adhesions between the muscle tear and her transverse colon.  She got peritenitis and might not survive.

So I'm going to try to make an appointment to go in to the doctor today.  It's still only 7:45 here in Vegas.  I'll see if I can remain on task long enough to call the doctor in 20 minutes or so... so I don't die.

Is it just me?  Am I lazy?  It's not that I don't understand the consequences for not getting medical treatment.

In this position, I can't help but think about my childhood hero, Jim Henson, who died of a bad cough because he was too lazy to go to the doctor and didn't want to bother anybody.