This past Tuesday was Medical Maintenance Day here at Eat Our Brains – for two of us, at least. Madeleine underwent a Required Procedure and received de Good Drugs as a reward . . . while I had my first head-to-toe, no-stone-left-unturned physical exam in a decade. My physician, Dr. K., had been nagging me to have one for two years, and I finally caved.

Those of you who know me well know that I don’t like to be known well. So for me to submit to a physical is roughly equivalent to a normal, well-adjusted person stripping naked and rolling in cactus. Then showering with rubbing alcohol. Then rolling in cactus again.

You might think that this bad attitude would put a strain on my poor, hapless physician, but you’d be wrong. Dr. K. – or, as I often refer to him, the Evil Dr. K. – is unflappable. Grumbles, whines, baleful glares, and brandished Bowie knives do not deter him. He does his job, and he does it thoroughly. Damn the torpedoes. Now cough.

He and his Evil Assistant hammered my knees, shone bright lights in my face, stuck needles in my arm, drained my blood, asked rudely personal questions, and taped hundreds of sensors all over my chest only to rip them off (along with similar-sized patches of skin and hair) ten seconds later.

Then Dr. K. banished his assistant from the exam room and gave me a thin smile.

“Everyone always wishes I’d forget this next part,” he said, putting on his batting gloves. “But I have to do it. I’m sorry. Turn around, please. You can brace yourself against the table.”

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