7/4/00

Grilled Patient

I could eat Jewish food, the doctor said, if I cut out the "Jewish" and eat only the "food."

    My doctor tried to put me on a diet recently. I don't know why. It's not as if I'm fat. He explained that dieting is what a modern person does, dieting and exercising, and I said "Exercising?! Dieting and exercising?!"
    I pointed out that I am a Jew, and as such, I eat, and then I nap, a way of life that has kept my people going lo these many years.
    He reminded me that mountain people in Kugelstan, or Kishkezia, or some such place, live to 140 by consuming nothing more than yogurt and yak urine, and it made me think. I concluded that if I live only to 120 because I ate like a pig, I will be able to live with that.
    Then he reminded me I have children, a dirty tactic my mother has a lot of success with, so what could I say.
    The doctor gave me a pen and told me to make a list.
    "Cabbage," he said, but with his accent I thought he said "Garbage," so I understood he was talking about garbohydrates, those enriched juices at the bottom of a garbage pail that boost hydration.
    It was a silly mistake.
    Cabbage I eat, for I have an affinity for halishkes (aka holishkes or holiptchkes, depending on if you're Polish or not). But the doctor said no, just cabbage without any filling, sauce or flavoring, and I thought he was joking.
    He said liver is healthy but only if it isn't tasty (I was beginning to see a pattern here). I thought he wasn't looking, so I wrote down "chopped liver," because as I see it, if it isn't chopped, it's still an organ.
    Fish I was allowed, and I said hey, this diet isn't so bad! Like, I eat fish, without even knowing it's healthy. But he read me like a cookbook, and he said "Not schmaltz herring."
    "But that's how the fish comes," I argued, "with the schmaltz already covering it." What, I'm going to eat the schmaltz separate?
    This doctor, I began to realize, is an idiot.
    "No schmaltz, no fat, no oil, no sugar, no salt, no white flour, no nothing if you want to be healthy," he said sternly, the thought of which was making me sick.
    "None of the K foods?" I whimpered.
    He brightened. "Indeed, kohlrabi is very good for you," he said enthusiastically, but what Jew eats a kohlrabi? I was talking about knishes, kishke, kasha, kugel, knaidlach and kreplach, known to be important sources of Vitamin K.
    That's when he cracked down on me, real hard. He said I was going to have to follow a strict daily diet.
    "OK," I said, making like I was cooperating, "I could probably cut down to one bagel a day, with shmear, cholent once a week not including leftovers, and I could completely eliminate matza. This diet I could be very strict about. And on Hanukka, I'll make you a deal: four days latkes, four days sufganiyot. That's a balanced diet, no?"
    He thought I was kidding, but this is my health I'm talking about, what's to laugh?
    He compromised. "Tell you what we'll do, and I'm only giving in because I understand how hard it is: you can have one latke, once a year, but boiled. As many bagels as you want, but you can only eat the hole. As much cholent as you want, gezunte heit, but leave out everything except for the barley."
    It was becoming clear this man was an antisemite, or a self-hating Jew, or probably both. I understood perfectly well what he was saying: I could eat Jewish food -- my staple -- if I cut out the "Jewish" and eat only the "food."
    But what's a carrot if it's not tzimmesed? Fish with the gefilte filtered out? Cheese blintz without the blintz is just ...
    "That's right. But I'll let you eat cheese. As long as the fat content is zero percent, maximum."
    "Can I have chicken soup made from a chicken?"
    "God forbid! All that grease!"
    Now you see what I mean? The whole world knows chicken soup, Jewish penicillin, is good for you. If you're sick, it makes you healthy. If you're healthy, it makes you healthier. Ask any old Jew past 90, he'll tell you, he eats chicken soup. But for me, it's a death sentence.
    "And I suppose," I said bitterly, "I can't have drippings with my challa anymore, without which Shabbos just isn't Shabbos?"
    He stared at me in shock. "Challa?!"

THE DOCTOR got out a tongue depresser, and I said no thanks, I'm not hungry. Silly mistake, but understandable, considering this guy's weird concept of food. He ordered me to stick out my tongue, which I happily did.
    He looked inside my mouth, and that really made me mad. He was checking what I ate. He even looked into my ears, but didn't find anything there.
    He poked my belly, and I thought uh-oh, he found it. Then he pounded my back and told me to breath, and I actually had to explain that not having yet died, I was breathing. He sharpened a finger and rammed it in me and asked if that hurt. Ordinarily when someone does that you break his jaw because of course it hurts. But I didn't want to give him the satisfaction, so I said no.
    He started hitting me with a hammer, which caused me to kick him very hard. I said I was sorry, it was just a knee-jerk reaction thing, and he said he understood.
    The examination was almost finished, he said, but not until he checked my prostate. I didn't know what he was getting at. I mean, I know where the prostate is, and there was
no way he could reach that thing, it was all the way up ... it was ... he would have to ... HEY, GET OUT OF THERE.
    Men, take my advice. Never go to a doctor with great big hands. The best kind of doctor is a woman, a haredi woman, because they won't touch you, they're not even allowed to look at you. A haredi woman doctor will tell you to stay home and just fax a photocopy of your body and then she'll call you to say baruch hashem, you're fine. If only there were any haredi woman doctors.
    So this guy was up to his shoulder in me, and I'm sure while he was in the neighborhood he took the opportunity to probe my lunch.
    When he climbed out he seemed satisfied (which says it all), and pronounced me "healthy, considering." Doctors, you see, just can't leave good news alone. Maybe because they're all Jewish, I dunno, but they work on the assumption that nobody's perfect, that everyone needs something to worry about, to come back to check again. You'll notice that no Jewish doctor ever went bankrupt, and that's the reason why.
    Not that I'm comparing, but when Arnold Schwarzenegger goes to his Jewish doctor, every time, the diagnosis is "healthy, considering." The doctor says he's worried about this muscle, or that bicep, it's maybe too big, and he should have it checked again in a month.
    I got dressed. My doctor reminded me to stick to my diet, get lots of exercise, cut out sex, become religious, and come back in a month.
    Y'know, maybe he's not such a bad doctor. I noticed that the moment I left his office, I began to feel much, much better.
    Iג€™d like to invite him over for dinner someday.

Dedicated to my Jewish doctor, Dr. Joe, who knows me inside out. We're friends anyway.