Tuesday, September 29, 2015.

FALSTAFF: Sir, you giant, what did the doctor say about my
urine?

PAGE: Sir, he said that the urine itself was healthy urine, but as
for the person who made the urine, he probably has more
diseases than the doctor can even tell.

* * * *
POINS: Indeed, it’s his soul that really needs a doctor's help.
But that doesn't bother him. Even if his soul might be sick, at
least he's not going to die right now.
* * * *
. . . Sir John Falstaff?
****
DOLL TEARSHEET: For God's sake, throw him down the
stairs. I can’t stand anymore of this ridiculous fool. 

—William Shakespeare, Henry IV (Part 2) (Modern English

Version).

I was sixty-one years old. I had a routine check-up with my

primary care doctor, Jonathan A. Page, M.D., whom I would be
meeting for the first time. I was an overweight, middle-aged
man. Dr. Page, a New Orleans native, was a young physician
who had only recently completed his family practice residency.
An unreal thought flashed through my mind: the meeting of the
buffoonish, superannuated, and overweight Falstaff and the
young Prince Hal (Henry V), two Shakespearean characters that
fate had brought together at the Garter Inn in London, or in my
case, within the confines of a clinic examining room.
FALSTAFF: Take away these chalices. Go brew me a pottle of
sack finely. BARTENDER: With eggs, sir? FALSTAFF: Simple of
itself; I'll no pullet-sperm in my brewage. [Exit BARTENDER]
How now!

I asked Dr. Page about testosterone. Pause. Then I said: “The

strength it gives a man. That’s the secret of it. Is it not true, Dr.
Page? What would it mean if I took it—?” He leaned back in his
chair. “You are risking a heart attack, a stroke, or other damage
to your body.” Whereupon I importuned: “Let me but move one
question. How is testosterone given? Orally?” “No,” the
doctor replied, “by gel application or it’s injected by
syringe from a glass ampul.”

At a later consult Dr. Page recommended I take a daily baby

aspirin to prevent heart attack. “Bayer?” I queried. “It simply
doesn’t matter,” he said. “That’s what I thought,” I replied.

Dr. Page said he wanted to have a vial of my blood drawn to

check my cholesterol. I interjected, “But I had breakfast this
morning.” The doctor responded, “That’s fine. As long as you
didn’t have a high fatty breakfast like eggs and sausages.” On a
later occasion Dr. Page mentioned that he associated a certain
dream with me: he said he had been having nightmares about a
strange man breaking into his house, with the doctor coming
down the stairs to find him at the staircase landing eating
sausages with eggs. . . . with eggs? It was almost as if Dr. Page
had confessed to dreaming about my Shakespearean fantasy
about him! That was uncanny.

I admired Dr. Page’s academic accomplishments. He had been

an honors graduate in medical school and had earned a Masters
in Public Health. He was notably articulate, even for a doctor,
with an unusual ability and eagerness to explain medical issues
with clarity and depth. He is someone I would have wanted for a
like-minded friend: analgesia for my longing for a comrade-in-
arms. In thinking about Dr. Page I associate to several lines from
Cosima Wagner’s Diaries, a quote by Richard Wagner. “I shall
surely leave the world with my great longing to have seen and
known a man I truly venerate, who has given me something,
unsatisfied. In my childhood years I used to dream I had been
with Shakespeare, had conversed with him; that was my longing
finding expression.”