NaBloPoMo Day 25!

It’s pretty nice having one’s own in-house physician. McDoc tells me when it’s time to use my inhaler (sometimes I don’t notice I’m wheezing before he does), when I need to go to the doctor for antibiotics (it’s generally looked down upon for a doc to write prescriptions for family members) and when I just need to take ibuprofen and get some rest. He also nags me to take my vitamins, a big pile of horse pills that he puts out for me every morning — ick! 😉

You might wonder, though, how well music and medicine mix together in a household. Pretty well, as it turns out — at least one of us is highly employable! 😉 But that’s not all!

Recently McDoc searched for info about the heart condition that Mahler developed toward the end of his life. He found a pretty cool-looking book: Music & Medicine: Medical Profiles of Great Composers, by By John O’Shea. I’ll have to look at it more closely when time permits; one thing I noticed right away was that, although syphilis certainly was popular among artistic folk in bygone centuries, at least a few composers — Mozart and Ravel, for example — were wrongly rumored to have had it. It does seem to have played a role in Beethoven’s deafness, however.

Looks like something that belongs in the McVirgo Manor library! Fortunately, McDoc and I both have birthdays coming up within the next few months… 😉