Keeper and I Play Doctor

Here’s how Keeper and I started the New Year. While I was still in a fog after a rowdy New Year’s Eve of TV-watching followed by 11 hours of sleep, Keeper wanted me to play Doctor.

This is not as fun as it sounds. If you’re picturing Keeper in a white coat, wagging his eyebrows and asking me to put my feet in the stirrups, think again. Our particular brand of “Doctor” involves Keeper naming a symptom he’s having and asking me if I think he’ll die from it. This is not foreplay, believe me. It is the prelude to 24-48 hours of misery in which Keeper envisions his untimely death from complications of tendinitis, hangnail or bee sting.

“I’m having heel pain,” he whispered in my ear this morning, so as not to wake up the dog. Corky snored blissfully on as I fought to come out of my stupor on this first day of 2010.

“Whaa?” I answered, eyes still closed.

“My heel hurts. Do you think it’s permanent?”

Now, one of my New Year’s resolutions is to be more patient with Keeper’s quirks, but I was not equipped to keep that particular promise to myself without the aid of caffeine.

I suppressed the retort that popped up first. (Permanent injury? I’ll show you a permanent injury. Blam!)

Unfortunately for Keeper, I could not control the second response: “It’s probably heel cancer. It’s 99 percent fatal.”

Now, most people familiar with my sarcastic nature would recognize this comment as (1) a joke; and (2) an invitation to back off and go make the coffee.

Keeper, however, was lost in Hypochondria and stared at me, dumbstruck. “Really?” he whimpered. “Can’t you offer me any reassurance?”

True confession time. I made the “more patience” resolution the morning that Keeper left for work with these words ringing in his ears: “Suck it up! Some of us are in pain every day of our lives!” This was in response to last week’s query about his heel pain.

As soon as he left, I regretted my outburst. Sure, Keeper has a probable heel spur that starts to hurt as he rounds the track for mile 3 of his weekly run. A nuisance, I’m sure. But he’s looking for sympathy from a woman with a heel spur that sends shooting pains up her left leg, unexpectedly crippling her as she goes about her daily activities. In the World of Pain, he wasn’t even in the antechamber.

Still, I’m supposed to be Keeper’s soft place to fall, according to Dr. Phil. So, I’m going to work on providing comfort during his frequent episodes of hypochondria.

Today, though, I couldn’t do it. Keeper turned to the Internet for medical advice, which made him even more paranoid and confused. I suggested he think about something else for a while. Maybe he’d like to go to a movie?

Then he said those four little words I’d been longing to hear: “I’m calling the doctor.”

Here’s wishing you a great new year, and best of luck with keeping your own resolutions.