Trying to Be An Easy-Going Kind of Guy

As silly as this may sound, I have tried to live my entire life according to the following (admittedly odd) belief:
One is allotted only a certain number of times in one’s life to get angry.  After one uses them up, one then dies.
That’s a big reason why I do not get very angry very often.
Getting angry really doesn’t do much good. It causes stress, makes other people uncomfortable at best, and when you’re all done being angry, nothing really changes.
So why bother?
Let me give you an example of how I handle things that might make other people start gnawing at a rug somewhere.
A couple of weeks ago, as a part of my continuing recovery from last year’s heart attack, I had an appointment in Griffin for a CT scan on my neck. My cardiologist wanted to make sure I didn’t have anything building up in there that might block blood supply to the brain, since I had reported being dizzy and light-headed from time to time.
I arranged to get off work early that Friday so I could make the one-hour-plus drive from Manchester to Griffin. I left the office about 12:45 for my 2:30 appointment, for which I needed to arrive about a half-hour early.
No problem.
The GPS in my car took me on the unfamiliar journey. Well, it wasn’t all unfamiliar – once I got past Woodbury I was going into terra incognita, places where I had never been before, so I was glad my car was equipped with GPS.
I don’t know if you’ve ever driven from Manchester to Griffin, but it’s some very pretty countryside out there.
Anyway, I made it to the medical park in plenty of time, went inside, and checked in.
I had already taken care of the majority of the paperwork online before the visit, so there wasn’t a whole heck of a lot I had to do at the check-in desk. After getting my wristband I sat down in the waiting area to wait (which is what you do when you’re in a waiting area).
When they called my name (I still look around for my father every time I hear someone say, “Mr. Bagley,” because that was his name – mine’s Jack), I followed a very nice nurse into a room where I was instructed to sit in a reclining chair.
The nurse and I chatted about many different things as she prepared all the needles and tubes and tapes and things that she would be working with for the CT scan, for which a dye would be injected into my bloodstream. As she worked and we talked, she checked her computer and saw my latest labs had something called eGFR measured at a level of 33. (Since the “doctor” before my name is in education, not medicine, I had no real idea of what she was talking about, but I nodded and went along with it.)
The nurse frowned a bit and said that number was low, as they looked for a number around 50. It’s supposed to be linked to kidney function, and mine took a hit with the heart attack. So to be sure, she drew some blood and they did a fresh test.
This time the number came back at 29.
The nurse and the technician who’d be performing the CT scan said that their policy was that the bottom line for the test was a 30, and I was at 29. There was no way they could conduct the CT scan, and they were very sorry … but maybe an ultrasound could be done (elsewhere) to check my carotid arteries.
I digested that information and said, “So you’re telling me that I drove an hour and change to get here for nothing, right?”
They both nodded and again apologized. I think they were waiting for me to get angry. Many people in that situation, who like me needed that particular test and weren’t going to have it, would have done so.
I didn’t.
After a moment, I said, “Well, life happens.”
The nurse and the technician looked at each other, then back at me.
“Look, I can’t complain.  I got off work a couple of hours early, I had a nice drive through some pretty countryside, and I get to go home with nothing more than one needle jab into my arm. All in all, it’s not a bad day.”
The technician said, “I wish more people who come in here had your attitude.”
It wasn’t worth getting upset.  What if I had made a scene?  Well, as soon as I was finished, I would still be going home without having had the test.
It just wasn’t worth wasting one of my allotted angries.