Well it’s finally happening.  The end is near.  I had my annual physical last week.  It’s a free medical service compliments of our nations Medicare program.  It’s one of the perks of retirement.  I bet you can’t wait.  For the uninitiated, you should be aware the exam has a component that you don’t ordinarily experience in those conducted during your pre-retirement years.  During your Medicare physical your medical practitioner will throw out some questions to see how you are holding up cognitively.  It is a government program after all, and those in charge naturally have to have some standards in place so people can be held accountable. It just makes sense.  All the poking and prodding and sophisticated lab work will be a big help with your medical evaluation, but it’s what’s going on inside the ol’ noggin that is probably more impactful when it comes to deciding if someone should tell your kids to take away your car keys.

A lot of you are probably thinking if Trump aced his mental acuity test how hard can it be.  Not so fast.  You aren’t going to get to identify pictures of animals. Any idiot can do that.  Obviously the test Trump took was dumbed down so he could walk away thinking he is a genius.  You won’t be so lucky. You have to bear down and concentrate on the original, unmodified version.

One of the things you have to do is draw a clock with the hands pointing to a specific time.  Sounds simple but you will probably fuck it up.  There is really no time constraint so don’t panic.  Of course you can’t erase because what you are given to perform the task is a ball point pen. So just do your best by scribbling over any line that doesn’t look right, or maybe write “oops” along the side of it and draw another line.  You should probably make sure the new one you draw is reasonably accurate though because at this point your medical examiner is starting to calculate how long it will be before you are chronically drooling all over yourself and walking around with shit in your pants.

What you will find more challenging though is the deceptive word game.  You’ll be given three words and asked to remember and repeat them later on during the examination. It was easy for me to remember my first word during this year’s exam because it was “finger.”     That’s what my physician earlier jammed up my ass  to see how my prostate gland is getting along.  I didn’t have a problem remembering my other two words at that time either, but to be honest with you I don’t recall what they were now.  The fact that I could later only remember one of my words bothered me for awhile.  I hope I’m not getting Alzheimers.  I do remember  none of my words were “gerbil'” “flashlight,” or “beer bottle.”  Those are some of the things I’ve heard people  stick up their ass for reasons  I don’t particularly care to know about, so no doubt under the circumstances I would not have had difficulty recalling any of those.

Overall I think  my physical went very well this year- except for one thing.  One year ago I was five feet eleven inches tall.  This year I am five feet nine and three-fourths inches tall.  I am missing one and a quarter inches of myself.   I have been five feet eleven inches for the past five decades.  Where did that one and a quarter inch go?  I am shrinking and as we all know that is a pretty good indication a person is on the downside of existence.  Son of a bitch!  You better know I’m not taking this sitting down, with the exception of sitting down for a half hour each day with my old cervical traction device strapped to my head.  I figure if I max out the capacity of the water- weight bag, after a couple months I can stretch back most of what I have lost.  The grim reaper can just kiss my ass.

UPCOMING HEALTH TIP: How to deal with that smart- ass doctor who keeps rudely fat-shaming your liver.  

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