Healthiest Sick Looking Guy I’ve Ever Seen
In 1988, I was pastoring a small congregation in Woodstock, Illinois. Our church had started to grow, but we had a serious problem and only local talent that volunteered to lead worship. The guy that led it was an airline pilot so he was gone half the time. We were inconsistent in the quality of our worship and we all knew it.
There was a group that we brought in from time to time called, “The Song Writers”. They fought to survive by trying to exist on small offerings from mostly rural churches, but it was ‘slow death’! They went on for a couple years, and finally one day, they gave it up. Russ was the leader of the group. He knew we needed help and called me. He was a songwriter, bookkeeper, good singer, and he could lead worship with the guitar. However, his main forte was playing the drums. Russ was unique in another sense; he was no bigger than one of his drumsticks! When he sang he sounded a little bit like Rod Stewart but the guests all thought he was sick.
In 1988, the thing that was being talked about constantly was the “HIV/AIDS” epidemic. Visitors who didn’t know Russ all thought he was infected. Of course, since I knew Russ for years, I understood that he was healthy, but strangers kept asking about him, thinking he had HIV. One day I asked, “Russ, have you ever had a good physical?” I had a doctor in his late 60s, from World War II, ready to retire. I heard he was putting in his last week so I told Russ, “I got a doc who’ll run a full physical on you and I will pay for it.” Doc agreed and said, “I’ll need him for specimens one day, then give me a couple days to run the tests and I’ll give him the results before I retire on Saturday.”
He set the first appointment for Thursday AM. I didn’t see Russ again until Sunday morning. When he was setting up, I asked him, “How’d the physical go?” Russ said, “Well, I went and got my blood drawn and left samples on Thursday. Doc told me to come back Saturday for the results as it was his last day. I arrived and Doc was sitting at his desk looking at a stack of papers. He motioned for me to sit down and kept looking at the papers. Every once in a while he’d lift his head to look at me and then look back at the papers. He did that three or four times. Finally, he laid the papers down, took off his glasses, looked me in the eye, and said, ‘Russ, I’ve been practicing medicine for 45 years and this is my last day. Today, I’ve seen one of the strangest things of my career. You’re the healthiest sick looking guy I’ve ever seen!". Today, that’s me!
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