Doctors With Borders
Ever been hit in the head with a dime? Change hurts.
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Dear Shaun,
How often do we really need to go to the doctor? I feel good, nothing concerning is really happening to me health wise. With the state of healthcare in this country I tend to make myself more sick thinking about visiting a doctor than when I’m actually sick. Do you think we should go to the doctor more or less?
-Medically Mistrusting
Dear Medically Mistrusting,
Go and go often. I have a couple schools of thought as to why. The first is power in numbers. Change doesn’t happen cleanly, with a precise incision. Change happens as one big mess, things strewn about behind you in the wake of possible destruction. Most change hurts. Growing pains, molting… ever been hit in the head with a dime? Change hurts.
If we inundate hospitals and doctor’s offices everywhere for all of the maladies that we are ignoring constantly, eventually those who run these facilities will have to say, “something has to change.” I believe this is possible with all norms in our society that we hate. Quite literally the power is with people, not with the few. Now of course the people have proved time and time again to choose the wrong things they want to change. The biggest social campaigns, where the powers that be listen, are with Star Wars movies, comic book characters, and bringing Arrested Development back. All disasters.
But, if we start going in and begging for the care that is meant for us, continually and consistently, we can bring actual change. It may take a decade, I’m not a prognosticator. But eventually the system will give in. Now, sure, you and I may be dead in 10 years. So what can we do about it now?
I spent seven hours at the ER on Friday with my family. We don’t have streaming services so this how we get our entertainment. Kidding. My son busted open his chin on the stairs and he needed to get stitches. While we were waiting, a very nice security guard made him an octopus with a medical glove, and snuck him snacks from the cafeteria. As we sat waiting to be called a 40 year old man started telling us all about how he was in jail for a gun charge and that it wasn’t his gun and that he had to beat up everyone he made eye contact with in jail. The problem was, he wasn’t good at fighting and he lost most of the fights. But eventually people respected him for that and then three months later his charges were dropped. At that same exact time, a man named Richard (I only know this because every nurse, doctor and security guard was yelling his name), came out in a paper johnny and was trying to escape because he didn’t want to wait for his blood work any longer. They kept trying to insist he stay and he kept insisting that he leave. This was all next to us and the man with the dropped gun charge. The octopus artist/security guard just came over and said, “Why don’t you all move some place safer.” Which felt so wild because everyone in every other corner of the place was coughing or snorting their sickness away. Eventually Richard somehow called a cab and snuck out of the ER still only wearing that paper johnny.
Are you going to get that kind of engagement at the bar on a Friday? I don’t think so. I say, go to the doctor, a lot of them are trying to do their best in a system that they too know is fucked. But some of them will fight for you. Some of them will get your kid a Popsicle at the end of his receiving two stitches, and some of them will get to know you as intimately as they know Richard. To your health!
Send any and all questions to woocomedyweek@gmail.com with the subject line "Bad Advice."
NEWS
So pumped about comedy right now. I’m just feeling in my bag about my sets and I am now completely jinxing any chance of doing well for at least a month. This week is Hot Dog! week! We’re back at George’s Coney Island for our fantastically weird show where comedians spin a wheel to find out what their set will be. And we are bringing back our wildly successful Resident Hot Dog position. For an entire year Logan O’Brien will be at every Hot Dog! as Bryan O’Donnell and I try to break his brain. Literally every comic that has had Resident Hot Dog has quit comedy shortly after.
Saturday I am opening for the very funny and Guinness World Record holder for largest mouth, Samantha Ramsdell at Off the Rails. Tickets for that show are here.
