In general, rate your overall health.

It has been a while. That's good, I guess. <false cheerfulness> I'm moving on with life. My new normal. </false cheerfulness>

Whatever.

Honestly, I've been in a huge funk. The world is getting me down on so many levels. It seems like such a cruel joke for a person like me with zero tolerance for stress. There are too many senseless things going on in this world, several of which hit a little too close to home. I alternate between trying to get psyched up to become one of those breast cancer survivors who is like Thanks to breast cancer I now love life and complete an ironman triathlon every week! and thinking Fuck it all. I'm pretty sure I'm going to get shot to death before I die of breast cancer. I'm going to get me some pot and chill the fuck out before someone fucking kills me.

Seriously.

Anyway, I didn't actually come here to philosophize. I came here to write about a pretty trivial thing that happened last week, but nevertheless struck me as blogworthy. I lamented on Facebook about how I've been completing a lot of surveys about my healthcare experience, and one of the questions that always gets me is: In general, rate your overall health. WTF does that even mean - 'in general'? Does 'in general' include the potentially life-threatening condition that causes me to get these surveys in the first place, or does it mean 'other than having cancer'? My Facebook friends offered no insight into this; instead, the conversation quickly turned to the fact that hospitals lose a lot of money from Medicare reimbursements if their ratings aren't high enough, and that nurses can get in trouble if they deny quadruple bypass patients a double serving of bacon. But that's okay; I really didn't expect an answer. It's a stupid question.

So imagine my surprise when last week at work, I was attending a presentation by a guy who is interviewing for a position in my department, and he asked me the same thing. Yup. He was chatting along about the complexities of physiology, then he said, 'To illustrate my point, I'm going to ask a question.' Then he scanned the audience with one turn of his head each way until his eyes settled on me. ME, OF ALL FUCKING PEOPLE! Then he looked me in the eye and said, 'You. Would you say that you are a healthy person?'

I don't know quite what I did in response other than stare at him with my mouth open, but I do know that I think my colleagues were all just as uncomfortable as I was, waiting to see how I would respond. There were some uncomfortable guffaws and some sympathetic glances and the colleague next to me put her hand on my shoulder. Way too long of a silence ensued as the candidate demonstrated his command of sound pedagogy by waiting at least ten seconds after posing a question. But still, I could find no words.

It turns out that it was supposed to be a difficult question. In fact, his point in asking it was that there is really not such a thing as 'general health' - you can be lean and in shape and still have high cholesterol. Or high blood pressure. Or a bad heart. Or cancer, I mouthed to myself silently, and I'm pretty sure my colleagues did as well.

I've never claimed to be a healthy person, and obviously I am not. But the truth is that I do look quite healthy, which is probably why people always seem shocked that I have terrible disease processes wrecking my insides. It's also why, I suspect, the candidate chose me, of all people, to single out. I look healthy. I must have seemed like a safe person to ask without offending. He could not have anticipated that he would ask someone who understood exactly how difficult of a question it is. I hope we hire him so I can tease him about it. Or threaten to sue him for harassment if he ever pisses me off.