One ringy-dingy
Aug 11, 2008 12:51 PM, By Jeff Ryan
It’s true. When their oldest son got married a year or two ago, their cattle in the feedlot decided the best time to make a break for freedom was during the wedding dance. The father of the groom had just begun to dance with his new daughter-in-law when the sheriff showed up to inform him that his cattle were out, and, oh by the way, one was dead in the ditch next to a freshly crumpled minivan of another neighbor. I got to spend a couple hours that night helping them get the herd back home. Feedlot steers don’t drive like beef cows. Okay, maybe they do, but it was just the group of wranglers wearing tuxedos that threw them off their game!
Finally the doctor arrived and said that the X-rays didn’t show any obvious breaks, but it could be a stress fracture. That would take three or four days to show up. If it still hurt the following Tuesday or Wednesday, I could come back for more X-rays to see if I’d done anything serious. He suggested I take it easy and put my foot up in the meantime. My neighbor the nurse looked at him and kind of laughed, knowing full well I wasn’t going to do that. Although, that was pretty much my plan for the day about six hours before that! Now I had a medical opinion to back up my desire to be a slacker. Expensive validation is still validation, in my book.
The pain didn’t get much better over the course of the next week. When I went back for another Saturday morning ER visit last week, I had different nurses and a different doctor. All of them were strangers this time. We took another set of pictures and found nothing. Well, we did find that I broke my big toe at some point in the past, which I didn't remember doing, but the pictures don’t lie. The doctor claimed it was in my records, too.
Before we were finished, the doctor said something about my treatment protocol and my abilities. “It looks like you know what you’re doing. I mean, you put your foot up, you iced it, and you’re wearing really good shoes. I don’t think you’ll have any problems, but feel free to come back if you do. By the way, what do you do for a living?” My response apparently threw her. Must’ve been the shoes.
“Really? You’re a farmer?”
That's when I pulled out my business cards and handed one to the doctor and one to the nurse. The doctor read our company slogan: “Feeding the world…because Mayo Clinic was already doing brain surgery.” She laughed. “Oh my gosh,” she said. “That is excellent! I love it! Can I keep it? I want to show it to a couple of people.”
By all means, Doc. Then I gave them the background on the slogan. Perhaps I should add another line to my card. “You never know what you might step into on the farm.”
Fate will do that to you sometimes.
Guy No. 2
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