No, not quitting drinking!
Meet and greet with a new family doctor. (Aside: our public health care system in Ontario is great in some ways. But try finding a family doctor! I've been without one since my last one retired more than 5 years ago.) Anyhow, I fill out the forms detailing my medical history, my family's history, sports I'm involved in, and how much I drink - which being a practiced boozer with a finely developed denial mechanism, I lie about as second nature. The doctor, when I meet her, proceeds to listen to listen to the ticker, notes my obvious beer gut, suggests ways I might want to manage my weight and gives me a requisition for some lab work.
I am leaving with she asks me - just like Lt. Columbo in the old TV show - if there's anything else. I almost tell her, no, nothing else, but from somewhere inside, out come the words I have never vocalized to another human being: "Well, I think I might be an alcoholic." I figure that she will probably scold me and fire me as a patient. Instead she takes the news as if I had told her that I sometimes have back pains. Without probing further, she answers thoughtfully, "Yes, you probably are. Once you get to the stage of wondering about it and spilling the beans to your doctor, it's a pretty good sign."
Emboldened, I add: "Oh, and I lied - I mean really lied - about how much I drink in the forms you had me fill out."
"I knew that," she notes drily.
"How?" I ask, thinking "OMG, the physical signs are manifesting themselves!"
"Well, I noticed that you listed fishing as one of your sports in the questionnaire you filled out," she says, smiling now, "and every fisherman I ever met is a pretty good liar."
I begin to relax. "Tell you what," she goes on, "we'll have a look at the results of your bloodwork and if there's any telltale signs we'll get some more tests to see if you've done any serious damage to yourself. Then we're going to sit down and figure out what we're going to do about this."
Something I'd been dreading, and here she was, strictly matter-of-fact, reassuring and disarmingly professional. And offering to help! Now why didn't I do this 10 years ago?