I come from a long line of medical surprise artists. The men in the Dion family are winning fistfights into their early 60s. Somewhere between the ages of 68 and 72, we go to St. Anne's Hospital. Shortly after that, we go to Notre Dame Cemetery where we are buried next to other surprised Catholics of French-Canadian ancestry.

"That's the old days," my wife says. "You're thinking about your father and your uncles. People get more preventative care now."

By "preventative care," my wife means that I need to hydrate more.

"What did you have to drink today?" she asks me. "Three cups of coffee and two beers? You don't drink enough."

I'm 68. I'll be 69 Sunday. I don't like water. It doesn't taste like anything.

"I drank water when I was young and I worked outdoors," I tell my wife. "It was in Missouri and it was 101 degrees. If you didn't drink water, you'd pass out."

"If you don't drink water now, you're gonna pass out," she says. "Forever."

The seriousness of any interaction with doctors can be judged by whether your spouse goes with you.

If you have to have a tooth out, you go alone. If you're having hip surgery, the other one comes with you. This is so you don't die alone and there is at least someone in the waiting room.

"The other one" is a great marital phrase.

One of you cooks dinner. The other one does the dishes. One of you wants to go out for Thai food. The other one doesn't. One of you goes in for surgery. The other one waits. One of you dies. The other one waits.

I went with my wife Deborah when they thought she might have cancer inside her, and I went to all the appointments before the surgery, and I sat on a chair, alone and in silence, while they opened her up and found out it wasn't cancer.

"Did you drink anything?" she asked me when they let me see her after the surgery.

"Coffee," I said.

About a month ago, I went to see my doctor, a Russian woman I call "Beeg trouble for moose and squirrel," a reference to the old Rocky and Bullwinkle cartoons. She told me my EKG was a little off and sent me to a cardiologist.

I'm a Dion man. I know what happens next. St. Anne's Hospital. Notre Dame Cemetery.

"So, I'm gonna have a heart attack and die, right?" I said to the doctor.

"No," she said. "No siren. No ambulance."

American doctors jargon you to death. Russian-born doctors get to the point like a shot of straight vodka on an empty stomach.

My wife Deborah came with me to the cardiologist, and he told me I had to "clean up my act" with regard to my diet, tobacco use and exercise.

"Clean up my act," I said to the other one in the parking lot. "What is this, 1972? No one says clean up your act anymore."

He sent me for tests.

They did a sonogram on my chest like they do on a pregnant woman's belly. They sent me somewhere else for a stress test.

They gave me an injection of something that made me feel like I had a very bad hangover and was afraid my boss would notice. It wasn't that bad. In my 30s, I felt that way about twice a week.

You get test results very fast these days. They show up on your phone, so the doctor doesn't have to talk to you.

I passed both tests "with flying colors," as they said back in the days when people told you to "clean up your act."

The other one and I went back to the cardiologist, and he said my blood pressure was a little high, and that's what the EKG revealed. No pieces were missing from my heart, which was pumping away like a sump pump during a rainy spring.

She went back to work. If you want to measure love, she'd blown half a personal day on me. She only gets five of those a year.

I'm working on the smoking. I've accepted an entirely new diet that includes one small pizza a week, no cookies and no chewy caramel candies made in France. I walk better than a mile a day, and I walk it like I am late for high school homeroom.

Me and the other one, we're doing all right, and I'm trying to drink more water.

To find out more about Marc Dion and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www. creators.com. Dion's latest book, a collection of his best columns, is called "Mean Old Liberal." It is available in paperback from Amazon.com, and for Nook, Kindle, and iBooks.

Photo credit: Alexandru Acea at Unsplash