Random thoughts

A couple of weeks ago I received a call from my Internist's office in Albany asking me to come in for a "wellness check". Since I had never heard of any such animal, I texted my young doctor to see what in the heck this was. His response,"Mr. Cader, this is just something that Medicare is forcing us to do. You will not even see me. You will just see a nurse to update your records". Well he was partially truthful. It took about five minutes to update my records, and I got up to leave. The nurse politely told me that we had about another 30 minutes worth of quick questions.

Well, I'm slow, but I'm not exactly stupid. I quickly surmised that I was being tested for dementia. I got tickled , and told the nurse that I had plenty of problems, but dementia had not visited me yet. I was racing through the test with flying colors when she handed me a blank piece of paper, and asked me to draw a clock showing the time as 9:20. I immediately flashed back to a conversation of about 15 years ago when one of my top guides walked in my office shut the door, and asked me what I was telling my guests as to how far they could swing their shotguns to shoot at a quail. I told R.J. that I was telling the guests that they had to check their swing at 12:00. He wisely nodded his head and replied, " Boss man these rich folks have had digital watches for so long that they ain't got a clue what 12:00 is". I changed from that point on to my reference as a mid point to check your swing.

I quickly flashed on that conversation as I got to thinking," Holy hell. I'm not sure if I can do this. I finally recalled that 12 was at the top and 6 was at the bottom. Then I remembered how clockwise worked, and was able to fill in the numbers. By now I'm sweating because I figured that the clock was running, and she had the folks lined up outside to take me to a memory care unit. Then I panicked again trying to recall which hand indicated the hour, and which one showed the minutes. But, I did get it right, and passed my test with flying colors. The entire test was so simple that it was almost laughable except for my clock paranoia. I used to have the same problem with bone fish guides who would always call out where to cast my fly by clock directions. I plainly remember struggling with that as a much younger person, and finally started telling my guide to just point in the direction that he saw the fish.

I want to close with a couple of random observations. Since Martha has become ill, I find myself going to the grocery store either with or for her occasionally. A grocery store might as well be a foreign land to me as it is a place that I have never been required to visit up until now. I couldn't help but notice that in every grocery store sick people have to walk all the way to the back of the store to get their prescriptions while healthy people can buy cigarettes right at the front of the store. Hmmnn, I wonder if they are trying to create their future customers for the pharmacy.

One more thought, and I'm not trying to dive into the very controversial immigration issue, but think about these two observations. I lock the doors to my house every night, and put the burglar alarm on.I don't do that because I hate all of the people who are outside of my house. I do it because I love the people inside of my house. The other comment I would make is only applicable if you believe in God as I do. When it comes to heaven, God has a very strict vetting system before He alows you in; so what is wrong with a rigorous vetting system. Martha's oncologist is a foreigner, and we love him. I don't hate anyone, but I think that we should know who we are inviting into our country !

OK, folks, we only have four more weeks of hunting season left after this week, and I believe that we only have three dates remaining that we are not sold out on. It's not too late to come see us, but you had better call soon if you are thinking about a visit to Riverview!