Getting all this paperwork ready for college is a tedious chore! This week’s focus has been getting together the necessary medical paperwork so that they’re sure that I’m not going to infect the student population with some sort of plague or something. So they need to see my medical records.
My childhood doctor died a few years ago and apparently he took the location of his medical records to the grave with him. I did have a few emergency visits to the village health center as a kid so I thought that perhaps they may have exchanged words with my regular doctor and perhaps exchanged records along with the conversation. So I called them up, asking for a copy of my records and immunizations.
“Oh, we shredded you years ago,” said the friendly woman on the other end of the phone. Knowing that I haven’t done anything too scandalous in my hometown over the past decade or two, I deduced that she was talking about my medical records and not of a recent catty conversation. So there was strike one.
I then called SUNY Fredonia, where I went to college for a year, figuring they had to have had my immunizations on record since they were required for my entrance as a freshman back in 1986. “Oh, we shred records after eight years.” Shredded again, strike two. I replied, “Oh, I would think you’d enjoy a bonfire or something like that.” She didn’t find humor in that.
Luckily, the folks at my high school keep everything for one hundred years, so they sent me a copy of my “permanent record”, including a transcript and my health reports. Hopefully I have enough documentation for me to get into school without having to have a blood test and a new round of immunizations. Glancing at my transcript, Earl couldn’t believe that I wasn’t an “exceptional” student, clocking in with grades of a B+ or so. I told him my high school philosophy: why kill myself over something I wasn’t going to use again when “good enough” would get me through. I had better things to do.
