Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell

Lately I’ve been spending a lot of time thinking about my shoulder, partly because it’s been hurting, and partly because when I go to get a massage my massage therapist yells out things like, “Wow! That wasn’t there before!” as she’s working on me.

I never ask her to explain what’s gotten her all worked up, because I’m not really sure what I would do with more detailed information about muscles and medical conditions. As a matter of fact,  one of my most deeply held beliefs is that the whole “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” policy is totally wasted on those so-called “hot button” issues. Where it truly needs to be enforced is in the area of my not having to know what goes on inside the human body-most especially, my own.

You know how in the last few years companies have been sending us information about how we can opt into or out of their privacy policies? Well, I would really like to be able to sign up for The Right Not To Know Some Things. I would be more than happy to send in a form, or check off a box, or carry around some kind of card stating my identity as a “not-knower”, because then maybe I could prevent the kind of unexpected tragedy that took place in our home just a few days ago.

My husband and I were sitting in the living room one evening relaxing and watching TV, when suddenly, out of nowhere, he flipped to a channel that was showing a documentary on a woman who had an enormous tumor growing out of the side of her body, and somehow we managed to tune in at the exact moment where they made the first incision and you could see all of her insides.

These are the kind of situations that I just do not handle well.

I am the person who once, as an adult, burst into tears when the nurse came to prick her finger for a blood test as part of her yearly checkup.

I am also the person who, also as an adult, once required three dental technicians in order to get one x-ray of one side of my mouth; one person to press the button, one to stand next to me and tap my head in an attempt to help me relax, and one to catch the x-ray film the second I projectile gagged it out of my mouth.

Clearly something needs to be done here, and I plan on addressing this issue just as soon as I develop a process for un-searing images from a person’s brain.