The voice on TV said I should ask my doctor about Nexium. So I called my doctor and said, “What about Nexium?” “What about it?” he said. He sounded a little impatient. I told him about how I saw a bunch of people standing on rocks looking out to sea and the voice saying, Ask your doctor about Nexium. “I don’t have time for this,” he said and hung up.

Then, a couple of days after that, I was watching TV and an ad came on with this nice-looking middle-aged man in his backyard trying to throw a football through a car tire hung from a tree. A voice told me to ask my doctor about Levitra and just then the middle-aged guy threw the ball right through the tire — a really good throw. I immediately called my doctor and asked him about Levitra.

“What about it?” he said. He was a bit snappish, I thought, not at all like the kindly, patient man of medicine I’m used to dealing with. I told him about the middle-aged guy throwing the football through the tire and the doctor said, “So what? Why are you telling me about a middle-aged man throwing a football through a tire? I’m a middle-aged man,” he said, “a busy one.” And he hung up.

I told my wife about my conversation — if that’s what you would call it — with our doctor and she said she wasn’t going to let his bad manners stop her from calling if she had questions about things she saw on TV. In fact, she said, she had just been watching TV and a voice had told her to ask her doctor about Lipitor. She said the ad showed an older woman riding a bicycle and my wife wanted to know if Lipitor would help her change her mind about bicycle-riding, which she loathes.

I had to leave for my office then, so I don’t know how she made out with her query. But when I got to the office I remembered I had a query of my own. I had been watching TV the night before and Rafael Palmeiro, the baseball player, told me to ask my doctor about Viagra. “It’s right for me,” Rafael said, “Maybe it’s right for you. Ask your doctor.”

On the phone the doctor’s receptionist told me the doctor would be with me as soon as he finished talking to my wife. When he finally came on the line he sounded a little testy, but I didn’t let that discourage me from asking him if Viagra was right for me, given the fact that it seemed to be right for Rafael Palmeiro.

“Who the hell is Rafael Palmeiro?” my doctor said.

“He’s a really good baseball player,” I said. “Played for Texas, then Baltimore. Now he’s back in Texas.”

“I don’t care,” my doctor said. “I don’t care where he is.”

“Not a problem,” I said. “The thing is, Rafael says Viagra is right for him and he says I should ask you, if it’s right for him, maybe it’s right for me. You catch my drift?”

I don’t know whether he caught my drift or not; the line had gone dead.

That same night my wife and I were watching TV when an ad for something called Crestor came on. This was a really nice ad that showed a beautiful place they called the Land of Success. A voice said if we took some Crestor we could live in the Land of Success. The voice said Crestor wasn’t for everyone; ask your doctor if Crestor is right for you.

We’ll probably be moving to the Land of Success as soon as we can ask our doctor if Crestor is right for us. Maybe Crestor is right for you, too. Ask your doctor.

Posted by Paul Duffy at February 11, 2009 09:33 AM

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