do that voodoo you do

My dad's a pediatric oncologist. This means that growing up in our family, if you didn't have cancer you weren't sick. Sadly, my siblings and I knew the only reason we didn't have cancer is because we were unworthy. After all, if only the good die young then healthy children are, by definition, bad. In fact, my dad has been known to say that his children will probably live forever.

So as kids we seldom went to the doctor. We only got stitches if Mom was in charge - the last thing Dad wanted to do on his day off was go back to the office. Imagine if you were a lawyer and you had to stand before a judge every time you needed a prescription, or you were a garbage collector who had to go to the dump to get a cast put on your kid's arm. I totally get it. Besides, we had the basics covered - in the fridge we had the pink juice (penicillin) and the purple juice (dimetapp), and Dad could bring home ear drops (for our swimmer's ear) and eye goop (for conjunctivitis). I have no complaints.

As adults we still tend to get the majority of our medical care from Dad. Still too miserable to have cancer, our medical needs are pretty minimal. Every now and then something comes up that Dad cannot cure over the phone. For example, nearly three years ago I scratched my cornea (I got a paper cut on my eye). Dad suffered a similar fate when his cornea was scratched by a tennis ball during a match with my mother. (At least he could be angry at someone, I could only blame my own spastic self.) He assured me there was nothing anyone could do and he sympathized with me, knowing how bad it hurts. It took no less than two years for my husband to convince me to see an optometrist about the pain that had still not gone away. Six months later I still have a scratched cornea but it's finally healing and it doesn't hurt at all.

Inspired by the end of my corneal torture (and emboldened by the fact that we've almost met our annual deductible), I have unleashed my inner hypochondriac. Today I crossed the biggest line of all. Today I saw an allergy specialist, or, as my dad would call him, the voodoo doctor.

Now I was never too excited to admit that I might have allergies. Allergies are for the dorky kids whose moms don't let them play outside. (Come to think of it, I'm pretty dorky and I rarely play outside.) Allergies are fairly useless - you don't get to stay home from work, you don't get any good drugs, you just get to ask extra questions in restaurants and sometimes you can make people lock up their pets when you visit. (Hmm... perhaps I will be allergic to dogs?) So it was easy for me to avoid finding out why I haven't been able to breathe through my nose since the eighties. (At least if I had done cocaine, it might make sense...)

I never even thought I had allergies until I described for my regular doctor that maddening inner ear itch. You know, the one you try to scratch with a Q-tip but you know you can't reach it but it feels good anyway, real good (I call them eargasms), that you buy your Q-tips in the economy size? That itch. The one that when it's really bad and the eargasms aren't distracting enough, that you have to make the weird nose at the back of your throat and you hope you are alone because otherwise your husband (who apparently doesn't have allergies) will mock you for sounding like you are trying to bring up a fur ball? That's the one. It wasn't until I described this itch that I learned I was trying to scratch my soft palate and I probably had allergies. Even then, my regular doctor just told me to keep the Q-tips out of my ears (I know, Dad, nothing smaller than my elbow...) and he offered me some Claritin.

When my mom (who is a voodoo nurse) told me allergy testing is expensive, it seemed like a splendid way to take advantage of my husband's health plan. In your face, Blue Cross. So I made an appointment and today I met Willy Wonka, I kid you not.

My voodoo doctor was dressed all in purple. Purple suit, purple tie, purple socks, purple shoes. He totally pulled it off, a happy, dapper eccentric. He took no offense when I called him a voodoo doctor and he laughed when I explained that I had not come to see him sooner because I do not have cancer. We went over my basics and suddenly Willy Wonka had become a psychic. He completed for me my list of symptoms and he asked about my overbite (the one I had fixed in eighth grade). The relationship between my useless nasal passages and my chronic thumb sucking is not causal (either direction), but the association of the two is strong. Willy Wonka became my psychic psychotherapist, helping me to see my thumb sucking as my genetic destiny, not as a manifestation of my insecurities.

I am only bummed because now I will have to come up with a new nickname for my dentist. I have been calling him Willy Wonka for years because I swear I once heard him say, "scrumdilicious." Since I have never ever seen him in purple (let alone all purple), I think the Wonka title will have to remain with the voodoo doctor.

And I'm not sure I can ever give up the eargasms completely. If Q-tips weren't meant to go in your ear they wouldn't fit so well or feel so good.