Dr. Munk

By Al Munk DDS

Reprinted from a previous issue with permission. It is Monday and I am sick. It started so innocently yesterday with a tickle in my throat and this morning feels like the Army stopped for a latrine break in my nasopharynx. Of course I am in denial of these symptoms like any self-respecting self-employed person. If my employment contract specified five days of sick leave per year as it does for my employees, I doubt I would leave the comfortable environs of my bed this morning. Of course there is no sick leave for the boss so into the shower I go, sneezing and sniffling away in the scalding cascade of water in an attempt to burn away the illness. After a few minutes of this vain effort, I exit the shower, one lobster-colored dentist with droopy eyes and brain to match contemplating my next move. I pull out the medicine drawer and smile at the presence of not one but three bottles of ibuprofen in its various states of delivery. When one contracts a head plague like I have this morning, a neon sign is flashingly lit in the cerebrum telling the higher motor centers to cease and desist or risk great bodily harm to yourself and others. What ibuprofen does in either its generic chalky pills or its shiny coated brand-name caplets is to pull the plug on this neon sign, making the body momentarily think that life can go on somewhat as usual. What it forgets to tell you is that you will be a bleary-eyed, snotsnorting buffalo head if you choose to go to work today. Of course, I take two of these little wonders and proceed with the morning routine.

I am certainly not one to primp and preen in front of the mirror prior to going to work in the morning. My staff will certainly testify to this without need of a swearing in ceremony. But I do brush my hair in the morning, albeit without looking in the mirror. This may seem a little odd but bear with me for the logical explanation. You see, I just cannot bring myself to turn the light on in the bathroom at 5:30 A.M. so soon after leaving the cocoon of my bed so I shower and all the rest in total darkness. This is not so hard to do after a few years, unless someone leaves something in the wrong place…for example, if someone leaves the shower door open and I slam into it with some body part. This is not a good way to start the day, especially when sick. Anyway, after exiting the shower, I grab my hairbrush (always in the same place) and run it through my wet locks a few times while pretending to look in the mirror. During the brief hairbrush routine, I discover that my hair hurts. If you brush your hair in the morning and it hurts, do not pass go and go directly back to bed. Even though there is nothing in the Merck Manual about sore hair and illness, take it from me, when you have dolor of la integument, you are toast and will crash and burn before lunch. Were someone to paint green and orange stripes down my face while I slept, I would show up to work as a psychedelic candy-cane due to my lack of even a cursory facial examination in the morning. Regardless, the two ibuprofen begin their journey down my alimentary tract, eventually finding the central control which is evidently unprotected by surge control appliances resulting in a short-circuit of common sense and I go to work thinking I can do what I normally do, even though on a good day when I am not sick, I can barely do what I normally do.

I arrive at work and my assistant looks at me and turns her head a little to the side like Woofie does in the morning and asks if l am all right. Of course I am not but thanks to the drug, I can say that I woke up with the sniffles but am feeling fine. During the first patient, I bend over in that dentist pose we know and love so well and discover my eyeballs are falling out of my head and my mask is filling up with fluid of some sort. I can’t see clearly and my body feels like elves have been hammering on all my joints for eight hours or so. For some reason I continue on. Maybe it is the Protestant work ethic though I am neither Protestant nor ethical. I make it to lunch with aid of an entire box of Kleenex and realize I will not survive the afternoon. I cancel out what is left of the day and return to my bed, that womb which I should have never left, and allow myself to be respectfully sick the rest of the day. That’s all for now from Ballard.

EXPOSURES

The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the opinion or official policy of the Seattle-King County Dental Society.