Physical: An American Checkup - Hardcover
Physical is the story of a hard-living, happily married, middle-aged American (the author) who gets a three-day "executive checkup" at the Mayo Clinic and is thereby forced to confront his mortality, not to mention glove-wearing doctors and the pair of dominatrix-esque technicians who supervise his stress test quite strictly. James McManus must understand his revised actuarial odds in the light of his not-so-long-lived forebears and the fact that his youngest children are only six and five years old. He has to survive his own cardiovascular system, inherited habits, and genetic handicaps long enough to see Bea and Grace into adulthood. But with so much at stake, and in spite of his terror of death, he may not have the willpower to follow the Mayo clinicians' advice. On a related health front, McManus's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration's opposition to the stem cell research that could save her life makes him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful wife sleeping with the brilliant ophthalmological surgeon who saved their daughter's vision? Physical negotiates the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the stem cell research wars. It's a no-holds-barred, wrenching, but often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a privileged generation that can't believe the party's winding down, if not over. James McManus, the author of Positively Fifth Street and four novels, including Going to the Sun, is the poker columnist for The New York Times. In 2001 he received the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism. A portion of Physical that appeared in Esquire has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best American Magazine Writing, and Best American Political Writing. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Physical is the story of a hard-living, happily married, middle-aged American (the author) who gets a three-day "executive checkup" at the Mayo Clinic and is thereby forced to confront his mortality, not to mention glove-wearing doctors and the pair of dominatrix-esque technicians who supervise his stress test quite strictly. James McManus must understand his revised actuarial odds in the light of his not-so-long-lived forebears and the fact that his youngest children are only six and five years old. He has to survive his own cardiovascular system, inherited habits, and genetic handicaps long enough to see Bea and Grace into adulthood. But with so much at stake, and in spite of his terror of death, he may not have the willpower to follow the Mayo clinicians' advice.
On a related health front, McManus's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration's opposition to the stem cell research that could save her life makes him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful wife sleeping with the brilliant ophthalmological surgeon who saved their daughter's vision? Physical negotiates the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the stem cell research wars. It's a no-holds-barred, wrenching, but often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a privileged generation that can't believe the party's winding down, if not over. "The majority of us find medical matters an intimidating mystery. McManus's grab bag of personal anecdote, medical history and polemic offers an entertaining and often insightful look at one man's experience with the healthcare system. If there's any message to take away from McManus's book, it's to enjoy your good health so long as you still have it. Once you lose it, getting it back is an all consuming task."—Ed Nawotka, San Francisco Chronicle "McManus's jeremiads about George W. Bush's 'fixed-in-Sakrete' mentality can be just as compelling as his comic observations about his Mayo trip, and he has more than a few tart rejoinders to conservative attitudes about stem-cell research."—Chicago Sun-Times "[McManus] addresses a topic that should concern everyone including faddish cardplayers—our national health. For a magazine assignment McManus undergoes the Mayo Clinic's storied 'executive physical,' including an undignified but essential colonoscopy. McManus's $8,484.25 Mayo checkup? Harper's picked up the tab, but as he notes, 45 million Americans have no health coverage at all. If you're one of 'em, good luck getting that colonoscopy."—Jerome Ludwig, Chicago Reader "When New York Times poker columnist McManus visited the Mayo Clinic for an extensive—and invasive—physical, he came face-to-face with the newest realization of millions of baby boomers: mortality. Furthermore, to live to the fullest extent his remaining years in this mortal coil, he would have to clean up his act. Easier said than done for the fiftysomething lover of rich foods, hard liquor, and the occasional postprandial cigarette. Undergoing Mayo's three-day, head-to-toe, inside-and-out, executive physical induces self-deprecating reflection on the consequences of a lifetime of indulgences. While he wants to be around when his two youngest daughters graduate from college, he knows the road ahead will be tough. With his unusual lifestyle (long nights of poker), love for baked ziti, and a family history of heart disease, he's being asked to make some serious sacrifices. Will he succeed? Tune in next book. In the meantime, McManus uses the lighthearted account of his physical to launch serious-as-a-heart-attack discussion of the current state of health care in the U.S., zeroing in on stem-cell research (he has a 30-year-old daughter with juvenile diabetes) and blasting government policies that impair progress by limiting research possibilities."—Donna Chavez, Booklist (starred review) "As McManus admits, he's been spending too much time on his duff, playing poker and eating third helpings of his wife's cooking. He also likes his liquor and his postprandial cigarette—all bad things given his family history of early heart attacks and death. In this disjointed, sometimes uproarious, sometimes powerful book, Mcmanus describes his experience of the über-physical—the executive physical at the Mayo Clinic. McManus does amazing high-energy riffs on themes like our belief in our own immortality, and assesses the manner and personalities of his doctors as keenly as they examine him. One wonders whether he needed an $8,000 physical to learn he should exercise more, eat and drink less and cut out the smoking, but the tour of the remarkable Mayo Clinic and the best physical money can buy is well worthwhile. Equally strong is a recounting of his older daughter Bridget's struggle with juvenile diabetes, which leads to forceful . . . rants against President Bush for virtually banning embryonic stem cell research (which could lead to a cure for diabetes)."—Publishers Weekly
On a related health front, McManus's twenty-nine-year-old daughter, Bridget, has lived with juvenile diabetes since she was four, and the Bush Administration's opposition to the stem cell research that could save her life makes him feel like he "might have to do something rash." Meanwhile, should he have a vasectomy? Or try for another child, having lost his only son? How much longer will he be able to perform such manly feats without Viagra? Is his grateful wife sleeping with the brilliant ophthalmological surgeon who saved their daughter's vision? Physical negotiates the political and medical forks in the labyrinth of our health care system and calls for sanity and enlightenment in the stem cell research wars. It's a no-holds-barred, wrenching, but often hilarious portrait of the looming mortality of a privileged generation that can't believe the party's winding down, if not over. "The majority of us find medical matters an intimidating mystery. McManus's grab bag of personal anecdote, medical history and polemic offers an entertaining and often insightful look at one man's experience with the healthcare system. If there's any message to take away from McManus's book, it's to enjoy your good health so long as you still have it. Once you lose it, getting it back is an all consuming task."—Ed Nawotka, San Francisco Chronicle "McManus's jeremiads about George W. Bush's 'fixed-in-Sakrete' mentality can be just as compelling as his comic observations about his Mayo trip, and he has more than a few tart rejoinders to conservative attitudes about stem-cell research."—Chicago Sun-Times "[McManus] addresses a topic that should concern everyone including faddish cardplayers—our national health. For a magazine assignment McManus undergoes the Mayo Clinic's storied 'executive physical,' including an undignified but essential colonoscopy. McManus's $8,484.25 Mayo checkup? Harper's picked up the tab, but as he notes, 45 million Americans have no health coverage at all. If you're one of 'em, good luck getting that colonoscopy."—Jerome Ludwig, Chicago Reader "When New York Times poker columnist McManus visited the Mayo Clinic for an extensive—and invasive—physical, he came face-to-face with the newest realization of millions of baby boomers: mortality. Furthermore, to live to the fullest extent his remaining years in this mortal coil, he would have to clean up his act. Easier said than done for the fiftysomething lover of rich foods, hard liquor, and the occasional postprandial cigarette. Undergoing Mayo's three-day, head-to-toe, inside-and-out, executive physical induces self-deprecating reflection on the consequences of a lifetime of indulgences. While he wants to be around when his two youngest daughters graduate from college, he knows the road ahead will be tough. With his unusual lifestyle (long nights of poker), love for baked ziti, and a family history of heart disease, he's being asked to make some serious sacrifices. Will he succeed? Tune in next book. In the meantime, McManus uses the lighthearted account of his physical to launch serious-as-a-heart-attack discussion of the current state of health care in the U.S., zeroing in on stem-cell research (he has a 30-year-old daughter with juvenile diabetes) and blasting government policies that impair progress by limiting research possibilities."—Donna Chavez, Booklist (starred review) "As McManus admits, he's been spending too much time on his duff, playing poker and eating third helpings of his wife's cooking. He also likes his liquor and his postprandial cigarette—all bad things given his family history of early heart attacks and death. In this disjointed, sometimes uproarious, sometimes powerful book, Mcmanus describes his experience of the über-physical—the executive physical at the Mayo Clinic. McManus does amazing high-energy riffs on themes like our belief in our own immortality, and assesses the manner and personalities of his doctors as keenly as they examine him. One wonders whether he needed an $8,000 physical to learn he should exercise more, eat and drink less and cut out the smoking, but the tour of the remarkable Mayo Clinic and the best physical money can buy is well worthwhile. Equally strong is a recounting of his older daughter Bridget's struggle with juvenile diabetes, which leads to forceful . . . rants against President Bush for virtually banning embryonic stem cell research (which could lead to a cure for diabetes)."—Publishers Weekly
"synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author:
James McManus, the author of Positively Fifth Street (FSG, 2003) and four novels, including Going to the Sun, is the poker columnist for The New York Times. In 2001 he received the Peter Lisagor Award for sports journalism. A portion of Physical that appeared in Esquire has been anthologized in The Best American Science and Nature Writing, Best American Magazine Writing, and Best American Political Writing. He teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.:
Excerpted from Physical by James McManus. Copyright © 2006 by James McManus. Published in January, 2006 by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, LLC. All rights reserved.
THAT’S THAT
I looked away to the hills
Above the river, where the golden lights of sunset
And sunrise are one and the same, and I saw something flying
Back and forth, fluttering its wings. Then it stopped in mid-air,
It was an angel, one of the good ones, about to sing.
—MARK STRAND, Dark Harbor, XLV
I would kiss the diamondback if I knew it would get me to heaven.
—LUCINDA WILLIAMS. “Get Right with God”
The truth is, I don’t think I’m going to die. Not today, not tomorrow, not in 2067. Not me. To begin with, I’m careful and lucky enough not to get hit by a bus. An SUV maybe, or the culture of SUVs, or the cult—but no bus. I’m also immune by dint of heredity to most forms of cancer, by passport to snakebite and tropical maladies, by suburb and commuting pattern to Al Qaeda, by neck of the woods to tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes and floods, and by basic straight wholesome good old-fashioned solid moral American core family values (or a least a fear of needles) to overdose and sexually transmitted diseases. I’m bulletproof. At the same time, I try pretty hard never to imagine those eight hyphenated integers after my name or under my black-and-white photograph. No, not my zip code or social security number—those both have nine. Phone number? Ten. I’m talking 1951-20whatever.
Right now I’m fifty-four, a baby boomer gone mostly gray on the top and squishier than I’d like through the middle. I’m no Orson Welles or Chris Farley, no late Brando or early Belushi, but the small of my back, well, it isn’t so small anymore. Otherwise I seem to be in reasonably half-decent shape for a fellow my age. Plus I’m bulletproof, baby! So it doesn’t really matter, you see, that my father had his first heart attack at forty-six and a fatal stroke at sixty-one. Or that his father, the man for whom I was named, died of a heart attack at thirty-five, when my father was seven months old. Or that my kid brother Kevin, who was named for our father, died at forty-one of complications after a marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins, the best leukemia treatment center on the planet. A funny, Athletic, warmhearted guy who wrote features for the The Washington Post, he was in such bionic shape that it took a couple of weeks for even total renal failure to kill him, and his wife and mother and siblings got to watch every minute. “How’m I doin’?” he gasped upon briefly emerging, blind and desperate, from his final coma. “How’re the kids?” My doubles partner, an ophthalmological surgeon, developed frontal lobe dementia and doesn’t recognize his wife and children anymore, let alone me; needless to say, he no longer plays tennis or practices medicine. My caustically hilarious editor at Harper-Collins died in 2001 after a long illness. The woman who taught me how to play poker died on her ninetieth birthday. On his way in through a Wrigley turnstile in September 2004, my office mate and fellow geezer dad’s hyper, magnificent brain was drowned in its own blood by an aneurysm. In 1999 my fourth child (third daughter) made an unexpected footling breech presentation, got her neck lodged between her mother’s abdominal muscles during the C-section, and almost snapped her spine or strangled herself getting born. Two years later my son, a scorchingly talented guitarist who was named after me—me, who has less than zero musical talent—died of a drug overdose in a mental health clinic at age twenty-two. Suicide? It would not have been the first time he tried. Medication mistake by a nurse? Autopsy report inconclusive; lawsuit pending. At least two pharmaceutical companies who made antidepressants prescribed for him, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline, had lied about data suggesting links between their drugs and suicide in teenagers; lawsuits pending. Not that legal maneuvers or money can bring James back to us, or retroactively soothe all the pain he was in. Executing by hand the persons who manipulated the data and made the decisions to keep pushing those antidepressants wouldn’t accomplish that, either, though I’d still love to do it. In any event, I sure miss my beautiful son. I’ve read and heard people say that losing your child is the worst thing you can ever experience, and I can’t disagree. I’d also assumed it would kill me.
At this stage I realize that all these events were horrific but not that unusual, and certainly more are to come. More? All of us will surrender our health, our standing, our marbles, our self soon enough, or so I’ve been given to understand. Yet the most forceful and eloquent part of my soul still insists I will be the exception. I’m still alive, after all.
Mind you, I do understand the basic biological facts, and I do not believe in the soul. I was raised Roman Catholic, of course, but have spent the last forty years as secular humanist. Folks like me get branded unbelievers, atheists, heretics, educrats, ethical relativists, Jews, Brights, effete blue-state feminists, eggheaded patched-tweed-and-rimless-bifocals-wearing faggots, French, and much worse; more affectionate terms include freethinker, agnostic, lapsed Catholic, progressive, existentialist, reader of novels, queer, beatnik, and honorary Jew. I’m not sure which label fits best, but I do have a great deal of faith that our bodies—our brainwaves and actions, commerce and science and art, words and children—are pretty much all there is to us. Religion evolved to help us cope with poverty, imprisonment, fear of death, and other bad things, and that’s fine. But is some white-bearded guy named Jehovah or Olodumare, God or Allah, really out there? In here? On a throne up in heaven, above and to the left of Cloud 9? Or is he perpetually verging a gazillionth of a nanometer beyond the periphery of a cosmos expanding at 299,792,458 meters per second, frantically tap dancing along the edge of this most naked of all singularities? Was his word, his final solution, on eros, ethics, weaponry, territorial boundaries, contraception, evolution, and somatic cell nuclear transfer inked onto crinkly multilingual papyrus manuscripts a millennium or two ago? My answer to all these is, “Please.” I also have faith that there ain’t no infernal conflagration after death (unless you want to count the forging of my cremains), no purgatorial scorching of my incorporeal person-hood, no seventy-two black-eyed virgins or eighteen choirs of nineteen-year-old lingerie- modeling Brazilo-Scandinavian cherubim waiting on me up in paradise. Nor will I be reincarnated as a wild but eventually Triple Crown-winning black stallion; a granite-jawed southpaw with a 101 mph cutter I can paint the black of the plate with; or the twenty-third century’s Abraham Lincoln, let alone its most potent singer-songwriter-guitarist. even my hero Dante Alighieri’s sizzling twelve-year-old girlfriend, Beatrice Portinari, won’t really be spinning around no Empyrean in perfect equilibrium with Him. (Sorry D.) Because once my blipping EEG line goes flat, it’s going to be all she wrote. In the meantime, my life will be sweet in a number of aspects, a boot in the testicles other times. Sooner or later a Hummer will squash me like Wile E. Coyote. Either that or my heart and maybe another vital organ or two will break down and I’ll suffer, piss and moan not a little, then purchase the farm. I’ve already made the down payment.
As far as the suffering goe
THAT’S THAT
I looked away to the hills
Above the river, where the golden lights of sunset
And sunrise are one and the same, and I saw something flying
Back and forth, fluttering its wings. Then it stopped in mid-air,
It was an angel, one of the good ones, about to sing.
—MARK STRAND, Dark Harbor, XLV
I would kiss the diamondback if I knew it would get me to heaven.
—LUCINDA WILLIAMS. “Get Right with God”
The truth is, I don’t think I’m going to die. Not today, not tomorrow, not in 2067. Not me. To begin with, I’m careful and lucky enough not to get hit by a bus. An SUV maybe, or the culture of SUVs, or the cult—but no bus. I’m also immune by dint of heredity to most forms of cancer, by passport to snakebite and tropical maladies, by suburb and commuting pattern to Al Qaeda, by neck of the woods to tsunamis and hurricanes and earthquakes and floods, and by basic straight wholesome good old-fashioned solid moral American core family values (or a least a fear of needles) to overdose and sexually transmitted diseases. I’m bulletproof. At the same time, I try pretty hard never to imagine those eight hyphenated integers after my name or under my black-and-white photograph. No, not my zip code or social security number—those both have nine. Phone number? Ten. I’m talking 1951-20whatever.
Right now I’m fifty-four, a baby boomer gone mostly gray on the top and squishier than I’d like through the middle. I’m no Orson Welles or Chris Farley, no late Brando or early Belushi, but the small of my back, well, it isn’t so small anymore. Otherwise I seem to be in reasonably half-decent shape for a fellow my age. Plus I’m bulletproof, baby! So it doesn’t really matter, you see, that my father had his first heart attack at forty-six and a fatal stroke at sixty-one. Or that his father, the man for whom I was named, died of a heart attack at thirty-five, when my father was seven months old. Or that my kid brother Kevin, who was named for our father, died at forty-one of complications after a marrow transplant at Johns Hopkins, the best leukemia treatment center on the planet. A funny, Athletic, warmhearted guy who wrote features for the The Washington Post, he was in such bionic shape that it took a couple of weeks for even total renal failure to kill him, and his wife and mother and siblings got to watch every minute. “How’m I doin’?” he gasped upon briefly emerging, blind and desperate, from his final coma. “How’re the kids?” My doubles partner, an ophthalmological surgeon, developed frontal lobe dementia and doesn’t recognize his wife and children anymore, let alone me; needless to say, he no longer plays tennis or practices medicine. My caustically hilarious editor at Harper-Collins died in 2001 after a long illness. The woman who taught me how to play poker died on her ninetieth birthday. On his way in through a Wrigley turnstile in September 2004, my office mate and fellow geezer dad’s hyper, magnificent brain was drowned in its own blood by an aneurysm. In 1999 my fourth child (third daughter) made an unexpected footling breech presentation, got her neck lodged between her mother’s abdominal muscles during the C-section, and almost snapped her spine or strangled herself getting born. Two years later my son, a scorchingly talented guitarist who was named after me—me, who has less than zero musical talent—died of a drug overdose in a mental health clinic at age twenty-two. Suicide? It would not have been the first time he tried. Medication mistake by a nurse? Autopsy report inconclusive; lawsuit pending. At least two pharmaceutical companies who made antidepressants prescribed for him, Wyeth and GlaxoSmithKline, had lied about data suggesting links between their drugs and suicide in teenagers; lawsuits pending. Not that legal maneuvers or money can bring James back to us, or retroactively soothe all the pain he was in. Executing by hand the persons who manipulated the data and made the decisions to keep pushing those antidepressants wouldn’t accomplish that, either, though I’d still love to do it. In any event, I sure miss my beautiful son. I’ve read and heard people say that losing your child is the worst thing you can ever experience, and I can’t disagree. I’d also assumed it would kill me.
At this stage I realize that all these events were horrific but not that unusual, and certainly more are to come. More? All of us will surrender our health, our standing, our marbles, our self soon enough, or so I’ve been given to understand. Yet the most forceful and eloquent part of my soul still insists I will be the exception. I’m still alive, after all.
Mind you, I do understand the basic biological facts, and I do not believe in the soul. I was raised Roman Catholic, of course, but have spent the last forty years as secular humanist. Folks like me get branded unbelievers, atheists, heretics, educrats, ethical relativists, Jews, Brights, effete blue-state feminists, eggheaded patched-tweed-and-rimless-bifocals-wearing faggots, French, and much worse; more affectionate terms include freethinker, agnostic, lapsed Catholic, progressive, existentialist, reader of novels, queer, beatnik, and honorary Jew. I’m not sure which label fits best, but I do have a great deal of faith that our bodies—our brainwaves and actions, commerce and science and art, words and children—are pretty much all there is to us. Religion evolved to help us cope with poverty, imprisonment, fear of death, and other bad things, and that’s fine. But is some white-bearded guy named Jehovah or Olodumare, God or Allah, really out there? In here? On a throne up in heaven, above and to the left of Cloud 9? Or is he perpetually verging a gazillionth of a nanometer beyond the periphery of a cosmos expanding at 299,792,458 meters per second, frantically tap dancing along the edge of this most naked of all singularities? Was his word, his final solution, on eros, ethics, weaponry, territorial boundaries, contraception, evolution, and somatic cell nuclear transfer inked onto crinkly multilingual papyrus manuscripts a millennium or two ago? My answer to all these is, “Please.” I also have faith that there ain’t no infernal conflagration after death (unless you want to count the forging of my cremains), no purgatorial scorching of my incorporeal person-hood, no seventy-two black-eyed virgins or eighteen choirs of nineteen-year-old lingerie- modeling Brazilo-Scandinavian cherubim waiting on me up in paradise. Nor will I be reincarnated as a wild but eventually Triple Crown-winning black stallion; a granite-jawed southpaw with a 101 mph cutter I can paint the black of the plate with; or the twenty-third century’s Abraham Lincoln, let alone its most potent singer-songwriter-guitarist. even my hero Dante Alighieri’s sizzling twelve-year-old girlfriend, Beatrice Portinari, won’t really be spinning around no Empyrean in perfect equilibrium with Him. (Sorry D.) Because once my blipping EEG line goes flat, it’s going to be all she wrote. In the meantime, my life will be sweet in a number of aspects, a boot in the testicles other times. Sooner or later a Hummer will squash me like Wile E. Coyote. Either that or my heart and maybe another vital organ or two will break down and I’ll suffer, piss and moan not a little, then purchase the farm. I’ve already made the down payment.
As far as the suffering goe
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- PublisherFarrar, Straus and Giroux
- Publication date2005
- ISBN 10 0374232024
- ISBN 13 9780374232023
- BindingHardcover
- Edition number1
- Number of pages272
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Physical: An American Checkup
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PHYSICAL: AN AMERICAN CHECKUP
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ISBN 13: 9780374232023
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