A Stroll Down Madison Ave and A Story
A few weeks back, I had a routine blood test for my PSA (prostate-specific antigen) level, and the value doubled into the abnormal range compared to one year ago. Alarming to say the least, since it can be a marker of the presence of prostate cancer. An MRI of my prostate showed no evidence of an obvious tumor, which means there is about a 10-15% risk of a microscopic tumor.
I flew to NYC to have the "situation" investigated by Ash Tewari, one of the leading robotic prostate surgeons in the world, whose practice is focused exclusively on prostate cancer. I set out from my Airbnb to walk the streets of NYC to my appointment for a prostate ultrasound. For those of you unfamiliar with what a prostate ultrasound is, it's where they insert an ultrasound probe in the anus so they can image the prostate gland.
One block into my journey to the room where my poor unsuspecting backside would be forced into submission, I encountered a tiny twig of a woman with two dogs. She was about 65 years old, 4"10" tall, had on a huge white hat with wide brims, was dressed as if she had just stepped out of Dolce & Gabbana, and had on a pair of sunglasses with a massive, thick, wide black square frame and massive square lenses that made her look like a giant well dressed NY dragonfly.
As if that were not enough, she had two miniature poodles whose fur was sculpted and quaffed into a perfect topiary-like (topiary = the art of training, cutting, and trimming trees or shrubs into odd or ornamental shapes) arrangement almost exactly like this dog:
She was walking her two trotting topiary carvings down the street when she suddenly stopped, and that is when I slowed my pace and noticed that she was carrying a large, half-eaten sandwich in her right hand. The leash on the two dogs was in her left hand. Without thinking, I stopped in my tracks to check out this scene from a Diane Arbus book of photographs as she proceeded to retract and then contract her lips back in order to fully expose her front teeth (like you might do in the mirror to see if you had any chunks of food stuck in between your teeth) and, using only her upper and lower incisors, tore off a small chunk of bread. She then maneuvered the chunk of bread anteriorly by lightening her toothsome grip on the chunk of whole grain (of course) bread and, after using her tongue to push it forward until a sufficient amount of the bread chunk protruded beyond the entrance to her oral cavity, then clamped her incisors down on the bread chunk, and with it locked into place, bent over at 90 degrees and fed topiary dog #1 the bread chunk by hovering her face right in front of its face, at which point topiary dog #1 literally retracted its lips just like its owner, baring its front teeth, and gently and with great precision took the piece of bread from its owners mouth without any lip-to-lip or other physical contact, and enjoyed a quick snack. Then she repeated snack time with the topiary dog #2, stood up, took a bite of her sandwich, and continued her travels down Madison Ave.
Clearly, a high level of advanced training went into the creation of that special moment.
The scene was an excellent distraction from the movie I had produced in my mind of the ultrasound probe insertion into my backside coming up. Just as the distraction was wearing off and as the ultrasound movie started to roll in my mind again, I was thrown off my mental course, again, when out of the blue I heard a man call out "are those Tom Ford glasses?"
Now I've exhaustively studied human behavior and am aware of how we humans just LOVE it when someone notices something personal about us. We light up and feel as if we may have finally found someone who gets us. I love doing this with people because I love noticing interesting things about people and making them feel good. In the sensational and incredibly useful book The Power of Mattering, noticing is the practice of noticing something about someone that catches your eye and then saying something to them about your having noticed it. It makes them, and you, feel great, and it lifts people's boats and makes them feel as if they matter, which they do.
Well, I doubt that this fellow knew about the book, but he sure knew how to draw me into his web of influence. I snapped out of my mental movie of the imminent insertion of an instrument into my backside, looked up, and saw a good-looking 30ish man, casually dressed in Lululemon-like clothes, who then threw his influence net even farther over my brain by saying how much he loved the blue frame. I thanked him and intended to continue my forced march to my fateful future encounter when my momentum was interrupted by a question: "Do you use lotion on your face?"
Caught completely off guard, and before I realized that I was being sucked into a situation, I answered yeah, at which point he produced a small plastic bag with a skin care product sample. I was now aware of the "situation" and thought, fine, give me the sample and let me get going, but before I knew it, he admonished me to follow him inside to get the samples. The little "oh, he complimented me on my glasses" bubble of warmth started to deflate when he handed me off to a female associate.
The store (I don't even know the name of the place!) was a thin, small shop with walls lined with various potions for improving one's skin and appearance. The associate who I was lateraled to like a football was a young woman, roughly late 20's who looked like she belonged in an ad for a high-end clothing store in Aspen Colorado: bright white crisp shirt with the tails tied in front just above her naval, tight form fitting thin legged jeans with metal studs in various places, high-heel black boots that came up just over her ankles, a tan leather mini sort of cowboy hat, and very thick lips that seemed a bit too thick to be real.
She sat me down on a short, blond-wood stool, sat down directly opposite me on another stool, and, with her face and hat approximately 1 foot in front of mine, noticed that I was in "great shape."
Obviously, to be told this at 70 is good stuff, but the seeming authenticity of my doorway friend who liked my glasses felt like pure BS coming from my new admirer.
"How old are you?" she said
"70."
"Do you use any lotions on your face?"
"Yes."
At this point I am fully awake and out of the warm trance of having been "noticed" and I start to play possum (strategic passivity) as I love to do when I find myself being worked over for a sale.
"What lotion do you use?"
"CeraVe."
"Can I try a lotion on your face?"
"What is it?"
"It's for the eyelids."
"Does it smell?"
"It has a very light, gentle scent." She whisked the jar off the table to her right and slid the open jar under my nose. It was filled with a thick, tan material that looked as if it belonged in a machine shop for lubricating gears.
"Can I try a tiny amount on your eyelid?"
"Yes." By now, I was in full possum mode and really playing hard to get with the full intention of breaking her sales pitch after she had expended enough of her mental sales resources to make her think she had me on the hook.
She took a Q-tip, scooped up a load, asked me to take off my glasses, and then smeared the tan skin grease all over my bottom right eyelid. Then, using the surface of her thumb, she gently massaged the grease into my eyelid skin. I have to admit I could feel a slight sensation of tightness overcome my bottom eyelid.
So, as she is sitting directly in front of me smearing the grease into my lower right eyelid, she expounds on the remarkable properties of the grease: you apply it once a week at night for 8 weeks and presto, those blobs of baggy dermis below my eyes would buck up and tighten up and my new look would last a full 3 years!
Then she grabbed a round makeup mirror and, with the confidence of a deer hunter about to take home a trophy, showed me my new eyelid while exclaiming how much better it looked than my left control lower eyelid.
To me the sagging blob bags of dermis looked identical.
"I can't tell the difference."
"Seriously? Look how much tighter the right one looks!"
"Listen, I gotta go" (I did not reveal that I was on my way to have a prostate ultrasound).
Then she made a last-ditch effort, a Hail Mary pass if you will: "You obviously take care of your body, right? Don't you want to take care of your skin and how it looks too?"
Given my backside's upcoming date with an ultrasound probe, I was already on edge, but this sales rigamarole pushed me over the edge. I mentally morphed into feeling like a chained-up Incredible Hulk that had to break free at any cost.
I grabbed my Tom Ford glasses that the young man may or may not have actually liked, slid them on, stood up despite the young woman's protestations about how I will regret not using their product, turned around and walked out past my old admiring buddy without a word and continued my sojourn up Madison Ave to my prostatic destiny.
Fourteen blocks later, I arrive at Mount Sinai Hospital. After a good wait that exhausted my interest in Instagram, I heard my name, "Michael Maddaus," called.
"Hi, my name's Vicki, and I'm doing your ultrasound today," the young (roughly 28 years old) said with a thick New York accent that delivered her oral contents in the archetypal New York style: direct and upfront. Plus, Vicki was an attractive young woman - thick, jet black, wavy hair with dark but bright eyes - which only served to remind me of my advanced age and the ignominy of my having to submit my backside to her professional expertise.
Like all clinic visits, Vicki had to take my blood pressure, pulse, and oximetry reading. I was sitting in a chair, and Vicki was on my right at the desk. After placing the oximetry finger probe on my right index finger, she grabbed the blood pressure cuff off the cart, leaned over across me to wrap the cuff around my left arm, and as she leaned over, she glanced at me and said (no shit), "You have very beautiful eyes."
My mind raced back to the store I had escaped from, wondering if the machinery lube had maybe worked, but after immediately dismissing this fantasy, the only thing I felt at that moment was an even stronger urge to run away. To be clear, I love a nice compliment, but contextually, at that moment, with my unsuspecting anus about to be defrocked, I found her lovely words jarring and unsettling, and I muttered a sheepish "thanks."
Noting that my systolic blood pressure was elevated to 167 and chalking it up to being nervous, Vicki handed me the ubiquitous blue hospital gown, told me to take off everything except my socks, and to lie down on the exam table on my left side. After stripping down to just my socks, and getting the gown on backwards, I laid down on my side as instructed, freezing my ass off, since it is always so damn cold in these clinics. The deep chill coursing through my body did nothing to help get the key body parts prepared for the upcoming assault.
Vicki comes back in, turns the overhead lights off (common with ultrasound exams so they can better see the screen), and tells me to hike my knees up to my chest. As I curled up into a fetal position, I waited silently while Vicki got the ultrasound probe covered in a plastic sleeve. I heard the goopy, bubbly, high-pitched squirting sound of the clear cold jelly being squirted onto the probe, heightening my already heightened tension.
"Here goes," she said.
As Vicki plied her trade, I could feel my eyes bulging out, and I figured I looked something like the poor soul in the waiting room of the movie Beetlejuice.
As the procedure proceeded, I proceeded to unconsciously emit extremely soft staccato-like moans corresponding to each advance of the probe. Vicki must have picked up my unintended oral offerings because she noted, in a matter-of-fact, detached way similar to the way one might answer a "what time is it" question:
"Yeah, it's tight," referring, of course, to the entry to my backside.
Given the mixed messages I had been receiving all morning from various people, I was unclear if, from Vicki's professional experience, if "tight" was a sly backhanded but gentle criticism since it may have be a more challenging procedure to penetrate me, or if it was a sort of a small compliment that it was tight given my age.
I will never know, and now that I am done, I don't care!
