Sheriff Doug Gillespie was right when he told me that I have a “conspiracy mentally”…

My Point of View/By Rolando Larraz
Maybe former Sheriff Doug Gillespie was right when he told me that I have a “conspiracy mentally” because I see tragedy where there is none.
During my last doctor’s appointment my blood pressure was one hundred over sixty but, before I went to my appointment, I checked my blood pressure at home and it was one sixty over forty and I wonder why that much difference in such a short time.
Normally these medical centers don’t check the patient’s sugar level, but I asked the nurse to check mine and with a very disappointed face she did.
My sugar level was one hundred and three, but when I tested my sugar level at home it was two hundred and seventy-eight. And I wonder if their machine is fixed to make me believe that I am healthy or mine is as old as me and it is not working well.
Why all my readings and numbers at home are so different from those at the medical center is something that bothers me. I wonder if they make me look healthy so I believe I am healthy and what they want to do is
speed up my expiration date.
I asked my doctor (that is why doctors don’t like me because I ask questions that they do not like to answer), why my numbers are so different from the ones I get at home and I ask him if after three years of taking the same medication maybe my system is saturated from the effects of the medicine, but he said my numbers are great for my age.
I wonder what numbers my doctor is talking about — the numbers that I get at home from my medical machines or the numbers that they give me from the machines they use there.
Do you understand what my point is? Are they playing games with my health? Are they making me believe that I am healthy when I am not, just to speed up my expiration date?
The problem with doctors today is that they think they are better than we are, just because they have an MD at the end of their names.
While I was in the hospital the doctor came to my room and placed the stethoscope on my chest three times and walked out of my room.
I got out of the bed in a flash and chased the doctor through the hallway and made him come back to my room; I asked him did he think he was or who did he think I was by coming into my room to just play around with that gadget and not explaining anything to me, then just walk away; I deserve an explanation, even if I do not understand the explanation, I believe an explanation is in order.
While all the nurses were looking scared to death he apologized for his behavior and, of course, we became friendly for the time I was in the hospital.
It is not unusual for me to become friends with people I first fight with in the beginning; I remember back in 1976 when I opened the first bilingual answering service in Las Vegas, answering the telephones for doctors, attorneys and many other people.
For those who read this column and are not old enough to reach the brake pedal, an answering service used to be in style years ago with a company answering the telephone lines for professionals and executives after hours, on the weekends and sometimes twenty-four hours a day.
The opening day came, the telephone company promised us the switch board in the morning and by three in the afternoon there was no switchboard.
Then Clark County Commissioner Chairman Many Cortez was coming to cut the ribbon, but there still was no switchboard for the pictures, so I jumped in my car and drove to Las Vegas Boulevard and Fremont Street
where the telephone company, Centel, used to be located.
I went past security and walked right in to the manager’s office (in those days there were human beings behind the desks) and started raising hell; he promised that the switchboard would be there on time.
By the time I got back to the office on Wyoming and Commerce, the switchboard was there. The manager came over to make sure everything was under control and we became good friends and the friendship lasted a very long time. That was in the old days in Las Vegas; today if I talk loudly as I always do, they get offended and I would never get
the switchboard.
Today, when I get irritated for having to punch keys for this or that and I finally get a human I talk loud, they tell me that they cannot hear me because I am yelling so I have to explain that I always talk like that because I am Cuban and we always talk loud like that; sometimes they understand and sometimes they hang up the phone in my ears.
That is why I cannot get used to this punching for this, punch for that and I try to explain to the person on the other end of the line that I have a telephone to talk; I love to talk, I do not punch; if I want to punch I get my typewriter out of the closet and punch.
I miss the good old days and if I have given you a boring column this week it’s because I promised someone that I was going to be nice and polite this week for Thanksgiving, so there you are. Thank you for putting up with me for the whole year and I wish Happy Thanksgiving to everyone.
My name is Rolando Larraz, and as always, I approved this column.
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Rolando Larraz is Editor in Chief of the Las Vegas Tribune. His column appears weekly in this newspaper. To contact Rolando Larraz, email him at: Rlarraz@lasvegastribune.com or at 702-272-4634.