A Question of Guilt

 

 

I had a unique experience for me today. I was interviewed by a social worker at the hospital to see if I was mentally and emotionally fit to enroll in a class for pulmonary rehabilitation that my doctor had ordered. The social worker’s name was Angela and she was all of twenty-one years old maybe and was very serious and professional about her social-worker-type duties. I am going to list below some of the questions that Angela asked me, and what I told her:

Question: As a result of your breathing disorder, have you ever considered suicide or otherwise harming yourself?

Answer: Of course I have. I think that every person “considers” suicide from time to time, but I have no intent to actually do it. The problem with suicide as a breathing disorder cure is that it has too many side effects.

Angela did not ask about the side effects.

Question: Are you frequently sad?

Answer: Indeed I am, Angela, but it has more to do with the DOW average than with breathing difficulties.

Question: Do you cry very often?

Answer: Yes, I do.

Question: What makes you cry?

Answer: Shirley Temple movies, cold north wind and empty Dickel bottles.

Question: Do you have someone that you feel free to tell your troubles to?

Answer: Yes, I do.

Question: And who is that person?

Answer: Well, it is not really a person. My counselor in times of trouble is my neighbor’s dog. Her name is She-dog, and she…

Question: I don’t think that you are being serious. Isn’t there someone in your family that you tell all of your troubles to when things go wrong?

Answer: Mercy, no! My family are the last persons I want to know what is wrong with me.

Question: Do you have trouble chewing your food?

You must know that I am 75 years old and toothless. I have two pairs of dentures that I wear for short periods of great solemnity such as funerals and weddings. I did not wear my dentures today.

Answer: No ma’am I don’t.

Angela looked at me disapprovingly and continued.

Question: Can you have sex with your current breathing problem?

Answer: Not as often as I’d like.

Angela considered this a moment then went ahead to the next question.

Question: Is the area under your bed dust free?

Answer: It was the last time I looked there about seven or eight years ago.

Question: Are you satisfied with your self-image?

Now here I am a fat, balding, near sighted, near-deaf, tottering old man talking to a svelte twenty-one year-old gorgeous blond, and she asks me if I am satisfied with my self image.

Answer: I, certainly am, Angela, and I am not going to undergo any plastic surgery.

Question : Do you feel that you are in control of your life?

Answer: Yes, I am definitely in control, and those bastards who are out after me had better watch out; I will not be trifled with. I will not be made fun of. They will find that I’m not as helpless as I look.

For the last question Angela leaned forward.

Question: Do you have feelings of guilt and betrayal because of your breathing disability?

I leaned forward, too.

Answer: Sometimes I do, Angela, but I try to bear it all and not show it.

Angela was writing furiously at this point and said, “I don’t think that I need ask you any more questions.”

She told me that Dr. Myers would be in touch with me. I asked if Dr. Myers was the pulmonary specialist, and she replied that he was the staff psychiatrist. She really did ask me every one of those questions and about two hundred more. Do you think they should let me take pulmonary rehabilitation therapy?