Ask Doctor Grump (#46)
by Grump Dumpkin, Jr.
Note: “Doctor” Grump is not really a doctor, but his bedside manner is so brusque and unsympathetic that you won’t be able to tell him from the real thing. Also, like our government, he makes his health-related decisions on the basis of politics, instead of all of that scientific mumbo-jumbo that no one understands.
Dear Dr. Grump:
One of my neighbors left what looked to me like a perfectly good mattress laying out by the curb on garbage pickup day, and I grabbed it because my old mattress was starting to smell like some kind of fart sponge. Well, it’s a good thing I sucked down half a case of beer before I went to bed, because that mattress had some kind of insect zoo in it, and when I woke up I had this weird rash all over my body that won’t go away and itches like crazy. So what would you recommend for this? Also, is there some kind of thing I can spray myself with to keep those nasty bugs away from me?
I am enclosing a picture of myself so you can see what I’m talking about. I should also mention that I am really afraid of doctors, and that if you make one of your unannounced middle-of-the-night “house calls” like I read about in the newspaper, please don’t touch me. -- Bugged by a Bugbear in Bearass Lake, Alaska
Dear Buggy:
Believe me, Madam, I have no desire to touch you, or even to get within leaping distance of whatever you have become infested with. Also, I don’t know how many times I have told you people not to send me pictures of you and your diseases. If I wanted to look at stuff like that, I would have gone to medical school.
You could pick up a tube of Preparation “X” at your local “Dr.” Grump’s Placebo Pharmacy, but that’s probably not going to do the trick unless you are really lucky or suggestible. So as much as I hate to send one of my loyal readers to an actual medical professional, I’m going to do that this one time just to see if that will get the medical licensing boards and their nasty little friends in the prosecutor’s office off my back for awhile.
Anyway, if you've been watching FoxNews or listening to Sarah Palin or reading those informative emails generated by right-wing think tanks to help the more credulous segment of the voting public understand the health care reform bill (which is two million pages long and which no one has ever read except for President Obama and Nancy Pelosi), you know you're in big trouble now if you get sick.
First of all, I hope that you remembered to buy one of those expensive Obamacare policies. (If not, the federal health care police will be coming to your home soon to take you away for socialized holistic medicine reeducation to the Obama Gulag, which is in Eastern Siberia, and apparently within view of Sarah Palin's home in Alaska.) If you don't have a policy, your alternatives are pretty much limited to a long soak in a tub of hot kerosene or a long walk on a short pier. If you do have a policy, however, you should make an appointment with your Obamacare designated doctor, who is typically an illegal immigrant with a medical degree from some made-up country with an unpronounceable name, and who may speak only broken English. (They work cheaper than real American doctors.)
Your doctor will first refer you to your local Obama Death Panel, who will decide whether you are worth treating. (If you are over fifty, forget about it. The Panel will tell you that you will receive their decision in the mail within six months, and then they will direct you to a special exit with a fake elevator actually equipped as a gas chamber. You should consider yourself lucky if you are totally dead by the time they take you to the Recycling Morgue and start cutting you up for spare parts to give to celebrities and rich people like Jane Fonda, who needs at least three fresh bodies a year to look that good at her age.)
If you survive your Death Panel hearing, you will have to make a second appointment, and then the doctor will try to guess what is wrong with you and recommend a treatment plan. Then the federal Obamacare Bureaucracy will decide whether the treatment is appropriate. (This is much different from the old system, under which health care insurers always went along with and paid for anything recommended by your doctor.) Unfortunately, this process takes several years and may even require a joint resolution of Congress, so if I were you, I would consider seeking divine healing intervention, which you can obtain from my colleague, the Reverend Doctor Grump Dumpkin, Jr., if the price is right.
And here’s what you need do to repel those pesky pests. (I used to recommend a pesticide bath before bedtime, but it turns out that bugs are generally more highly evolved than we are when it comes to resistance to bugkiller chemicals.) Just pick up a couple of electric blankets and ask an unlicensed electrician to disconnect the heat control regulators. Then get into bed, wrap yourself in the blankets, turn the heat up to max, and watch those little buggers fry!
Now you have interfered enough with my golf schedule, Madam. Good day.
