my sixth month check-up

After my next check-up, sometime in March or April yet to be determined, they will decide whether I need to be seen once a year or once every six months. Things are going well, all-in-all. Everything checked out "normal" on the echo, which is nice.
But I hate it. I hate travelling up three floors to have the door open to a beautiful scene of the River, only I never see the River. All I see is the fact that I'm the youngest one in the room by about 20 years. And everyone there looks miserable. Its probably because of the beta blockers we're all, which makes us slow down. I hate telling my doctor, who is a nice guy and a good doctor from what I can tell so far (I am still alive), about how lethargic and energized I feel some days. And all he tells me, all any man or woman in a clean white coat has ever told me, "Well, you're just too young to be here.... You're just too young to be on this kind of medicine. Most people we see are much much older than you, and are stressed or not taking care of themselves or just old. And you're none of these. You're just too young." And my doctor, he is a nice guy. But it bothers me.
It bothers me that they can't find a reason, so they're just helping me to the next part ( a pace-maker of some sort), and that I'm too young for it now, but it'll probably happen sooner than usual, and then I'll hear the chorus all over again... You're just too young to have one of these in. But there it'll be.
And then I go and pay and all I can think of the whole way home is that I'm too young to have this kind of stuff, and yet here I am.

When I went into Giant tonight to get some yogurt, I thought not about the preciousness and fleeting of my own life, but that of my wife and children.