DR. HOKUSPOKUS' DIAGNOSIS

I had this pain that wouldn't go away. It got worse day by day. It focused on my tokus, traveled down my thigh to my toes then back to my sacroiliac, to here and there and everywhere and made a pit stop in my underwear. It even hurt me there. This embarrassing fact I must share.

It flipped and flopped and sometimes stopped to shop for blood to feed my brains, to jump-start my heart, to thwart an attack before heading back on another track bypassing my veins full of cholesterol with its goal my big fat jellyroll. The pain of which I complained and paid a doctor to explain was in there somewhere. He had to find a cure for this awful pain I could not endure.

I asked Dr, Hokupokus, specialist on toes and tokus, the spleen and everything in-between, "Can you give me a diagnosis and a prognosis on this pestiferous, onerous distress that I can't endure. Please, Dr. H, for goodness sake, end my ache and make a new man of me."

The doctor did what doctors do. He had me stick out my tongue. He said, "Say ah." He shook his head and mutterer "Nah." He listened with his stethoscope to my lungs and muttered "Nope." He asked questions, made suggestions, found no congestion. Suddenly, he slapped my back. I thought I'd have a heart attack. He gave a shrug, "A three-foot bedbug."

But be that as it may, a smashing cure was found that day. It was written up in journals this way: "The bug skittered up and down the patient's back. Often it paused to snitch a snack. Each bite caused pain. Bug slain by doctor's whack."

Now it's part of medical history.