The Gym

We have a gym here, surprise!! Actually the 'health' fad is slowly catching on...I can count about 8 different gyms in this city of 8 million people. When you think gym, don't think 24 hour fitness or anything...think 3 broken machines in a small, unairconditioned room.

Anyways, I joined one the other day (the best one, it has about 10 machines and maybe 3 are working). It's getting to be winter which means 100 degrees instead of 120 so I won't have to worry about heat exhaustion or anything like that...figured I might as well. Plus they have a track, the only track in this country. It's just rocks, not the special spongey black rocks like y'all have, just plain rocks but it works.

The gym works like this. 3 days a week the gym is open for men and the other 3 days for women and it's open from 3pm-7pm. Since men aren't allowed in on the women's days it means that we can actually be outside and not be the center of unwanted attention...and I actually roll up my t-shirt sleeves and show my shoulders...shocking!!!

Anyways, the point of all of this is to describe my doctor experience. To join the gym you have to have a 'physical'. When I went to her 'office' she recorded my height...apparently I grew a few inches in the last year. Not real sure how that happened since I'm fairly certain most people don't have a growth spurt in their early 20's.

Then she took my weight. I believe her exact words were 'oh, you're still small. You do not need to make exercise.' First off, I'm not that small. Second, if you work at the gym don't you think you should be encouraging people to go there and not trying to talk them out of it?!?!

After that she took my blood pressure. She gets out the thing, puts it around my arm, gets situated with everything, goes to pump it up and, surprise, there's not bubble thing. It's just not there. She looks at me and says 'you're blood pressure is probably fine since you're still small'. Another lady comes in and tells her where another cuff is and she gets that one out. This one has a bubble pump, however it does not have any velcro to hold it to my arm. Still she gets everything all situated and then holds it on my arm while she pumps it up. I just laughed when she wrote 110/70 on my paper and said 'perfect'. The cuff never even got tight on my arm but I have perfect blood pressure. Who knew???

The last thing she did was take my pulse. In the middle of counting her phone rang and she answered it. When she was finished with the call she wrote down a number and then said that I was perfectly healthy and approved to join the gym.

She was a doctor, an actual medical professional. Some people may wonder why we have to leave the country to have even very basic medical care...now y'all know.