Open Your Mouth and Say Ahhh!

“I got this PAIN doc.” Bet that’s what our man Obama heard  from 20 different places the second he walked into the Oval Office today and boy don’t we ALL have pain.

I have a steady pain in my neck that requires me to see a specialist in ghost-buster gear at the world-renowned Mass. General Hospital. He puts me on my side like a horse, covers my face with a cloth like I’m dead, then takes a lethal-injection needle left over from the Dead Man Walkin’ wing at Alcatraz and slides it THREE TIMES into the wee facet joints of my neck, the teeniest places imaginable where the delicate shell-like bones of the cervical vertebrae touch together - tap! - like the baby teeth of the littlest children.

The needle has in it this super-steroid called astroglide, no analog, no no wait I know, kenalog that's what it is and the first time he gave it to me in the fall I nearly threw up on his shoes. Two weeks later when he asked how it felt I had to give it to him straight. “How did it FEEL? It felt like gray death entering my body! Tell me, Doctor, has anyway ever done this to YOU!?”and he blinked a second, not really getting it, the joke of it, a doctor having a taste of his own medicine, but then burst out laughing: “NO no one has ever done this me! I’m about the only guy who knows how to do it!”

So off I went today to have this second injection because I was desperate. My man was desperate. Even my cats were desperate because no one wants to be around a person with neck pain.

The Doctor finally admitted today he could give me a couple of little pills ahead of time to take the edge off, like what people take before that big Roto-Rooter Exam everyone over 50 has to have and as I swallowed them I thought of our shiny new friend walking into the Oval Office for the first time today to see 300 million patients just like me lined up at the door.

“I have this PAIN Doc, I lost my house, my kid is both fat AND anemic and I’m out of work…"

If we had a cloth over our eyes for a while during the last eight years it is sure enough gone today, and we can finally SEE how bad things are..... So now here comes your medicine; just open your mouth and say Ahhh!