“All right, Mr. Golden, open up and say, ‘aaaaaaaaahhh.’”

“Aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhh ...”

“Very good. Now I want you to lay back and take a couple of deep breaths for me so I can listen to your breathing ... hmm ... OK ... very good.”

“So, Doc, what’s the prognosis?”

“Well, to be quite honest, I’m not really sure. Which is why I’m ordering a full battery of tests, as well as blood work and a CAT scan.”

“Umm ... is all of that really necessary, Doc?”

“Again, I’m not really sure. But you know what they say, better to be safe than sorry, right?”

And this, my friends, is why I don’t go to the doctor anymore. This and the way hospital staff members’ eyes would light up when informed that I had no health insurance, back in the day before I came to write for our hometown daily.

What can I say? Unless I’m – literally – on my death bed, I really don’t want anything to do with the hospital ... any hospital. Trust me, it’s not that I don’t think they know what they’re doing, they’re highly paid professionals, right? No, it’s simply that I can’t afford – even with insurance – to pay for a service that has no guarantee of success.