Growing up with a daddy who worked in a drug store and living next door to a doctor was both blessing and curse.

Blessing, because there was not one sniffle, one tummy ache, or headache that was not attended to immediately.

Curse, because every patient who ever entered the drugstore or the doctor’s office/home left me with the exact same symptoms as he or she displayed.

I’m not kidding. If someone showed up at Dr. Pennington’s office and then the drugstore with a migraine, Mickie had one five minutes after they left.

I’ve had scoliosis, a brain tumor, kidney stones, pernicious anemia, PMS (I was only six), psoriasis, fungus, polio, and once, I swear, I tried to have prostate cancer.

It was sad really, but if I was anything as a child, it was impressionable. I was also neurotic, spoiled, “knew enough about medicine to run me crazy,” and quite the little hypochondriac.

Daddy, God bless him, surely knew his wee drama queen was as healthy as a horse, but he indulged me and most times I got pills (sugar, I’m sure) or a visit to Doc who once, no kidding, put a splint on my finger just because a friend of mine at school had one.

Those were the days — the days when doctor’s visits didn’t require a bank loan and medicine was not $5 a pill. A little hypochondriac today would put his parents in the poor house for sure.

I remember when bartering was widely practiced as a means of paying one’s medical bills. One basket of fresh picked corn might equal a shot of penicillin or a mess of sweet potatoes might pay for a cure for the grip.

Times have certainly changed, haven’t they? I’ll be paying on my knee replacement until I’m in a nursing home and my newly crowned teeth, well, until they’ve all fallen out.

A member of my family recently suffered an automobile accident and was transported to a local hospital where he was “checked over,” his vitals taken, and an X-ray made. He couldn’t have been in the hospital over four hours.

Total hospital bill: $6,566.00! Radiology bill: $1,000.00; X-Ray Physician: $540.00; Emergency Room Physician: $700.00; Shave and a haircut: $85.

Okay, I threw in the shave and haircut, but can you believe those costs? Thank God, my family member sustained only minor cuts and a nasty bruise but he laughed a few days later and said, “Dang, for that price, maybe I should have more to show for it!”

Don’t get me wrong, I am and forever will be grateful for dedicated doctors, nurses, and hospital personnel who care for us when we are sick or injured. But, my heavens, who sets the prices on all this stuff?

I’ll admit I know very little about the current national health care concerns. I do know enough, however, to know I don’t want socialized medicine. Please, please, give me the right to choose whatever doctor I deem suitable for my family and me.

I’ll pay. My insurance will pay. If it takes me the rest of my life, I’ll pay. My medical issues are my responsibility, no one else’s, and my bills are mine to pay.

For those with no insurance, your bills may seem insurmountable but they can be met. Your health comes first; handle it with care.

I wish I knew more about it all. I wish I knew how to affect positive change at the national and local political levels. I do write my congressmen and I do a whole lot of praying. For now, that’s about all I can handle.

I do know though that things are getting out of hand and we are throwing our sick and elderly under the bus, so to speak, when it comes to their health care needs. We do need change, but we need constructive change, change that reinstates personal responsibility.

If you have insurance, you are fortunate. But you have also paid premiums out the Yazoo for years and years in order to cover whatever medical expenses you incur at any given time.

Sadly, more and more insurance companies, to whom you’ve paid those premiums, are refusing to pay even a minimum of astronomical medical bills. It’s definitely time for an insurance overhaul, not necessarily at the local level, but at the corporate and state levels, where greed continues to run rampant.

We’ve gone nuts, dear hearts!

Listen, I got a bill the other day for watching “Dr. Phil!”

I understand lots of hospitals have now developed a new oral surgery technique for poor people. The surgeon describes the operation he would perform if you could afford it.

I got a prescription the other day that said, “Take one capsule as often as you can afford it.”

I wish I could still get by on sugar pills.

Stay well, dear hearts.

[Before I forget, I want to thank the kind, thoughtful, generous, anonymous person who has twice now left packages of Mr. Goodbars in my mailbox for me. If I knew who you were I’d give you a big hug.

Might even give you one of the Mr. Goodbars –

Nah, just the hug.

And thanks to Clay Turner for having pity on me and searching (and finding) some Thin Mints for me!

Dear Hearts, you are the best.]