The Mt. Hope Scrolls: Mysterious numbers

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I was in a secret club one time. Mike, Thomas and I had a secret club. We were the only members. We had a secret password but I don’t remember what it was. We would pool our money and buy comic books, locks to keep people out of our secret clubhouse. It was great fun. After all these years, I still have to contend with secret clubs. A recent visit to the doctor’s office proved that there are still secret clubs. Just like my club, they won’t tell you any information. They give out a little information but won’t explain most of it. About the only thing you can get is your blood pressure. They give you your blood pressure in systolic and diastolic pressure. Sometimes they give you the apostolic pressure. That’s when they say, “Lordy, your pressure is high.” That’s about the only thing you will be told. They change the numbers to make you worry. “Oh, your pressure is 127 over 79. It was 118 over 82 last month.” That’s all the information you’re going to get. Everything else will test your math skills. A healthy goal should be some number equal to or greater than. Some of those numbers are less than or equal to some other number. There are good numbers and bad numbers. I can follow some of these numbers. Occasionally, you get an answer like that number is the icky stuff around your liver, kidney, or some other organ. Many times you get a number like 499. What should it be? Somewhere between 2 and 38,000. I don’t know whether to worry or not. If I ask some of my friends, the answers range from “That’s good” to “You better get your affairs in order.” If you want to have some fun in the doctor’s office, ask to look at your file. A nurse has written down all sorts of things but the only thing she will tell is your blood pressure. The ultimate in having fun is asking to see the EKG sheet. They have hooked up all sorts of electrodes to you body. A machine has printed out several wavy lines. This is when I start asking the questions. “How many of these have you done?” “I do about 10 a day for the last nine years.” “Thousands, huh?” “Probably.” “Does mine look okay?” “The doctor will tell you in a minute.” “Can I see the paper?” “No, only the doctor can tell you anything.” When the doctor comes in, he won’t let me look at the paper either. Every picture of one of these EKG things looks the same. There must be something on there that shows you molecules are about to explode at the speed of light and all life as you know it will end. Now I have a different theory about these EKG sheets. I think that these things don’t measure anything about your heart. I think that these sheets are like Leonardo da Vinci mirror writing. If you hold the sheet upside down and at a mirror you will read your diagnosis. That’s got to be something like that. Some alien came to earth and used this technology to take over the humans. The doctors are in a big guild to keep this information from the people so as not to start a panic. If we found out about mirror writing of your medical records what might happen to the world? That’s got to be the reason why we can’t see our records. Some doctors have told me that I wouldn’t understand what I was looking at. I really am not concerned about understanding; I just want to look at the wavy lines. I’m still trying to get a look at those wavy lines. If I ever get to look at them, the first thing I’m going to do is hold it up to a mirror. Bobby Jonte is a Greeleyville native. His column appears weekly in The Manning Times.