The Band – A device your physical therapist wants you to use to increase joint flexibility.
Pink Floyd – A nickname for your rosacea.
Deep Purple – The color of your spider veins.
Blur – Your twenties and thirties.
The Smiths – What you call the three couples you socialize with whose names you can’t remember.
The Who – How you respond when someone uses their correct name.
Red Hot Chili Peppers – One of several spicy foods your gastroenterologist recommends you avoid.
Chuck Berry – One of the many cuts of meat your cardiologist says you should eat less; a fruit your endocrinologist says you should eat more.
Tool – Something you can’t find.
Alice Cooper – What you named your daughter; what she named her son.
Led Zeppelin – One of the many kinds of aircraft you refuse to fly in.
Van Halen – How you get a cab because you can’t remember your Uber login.
Velvet Underground – Renovations they’d have to make to get you on the subway again.
Pavement – A material that aggravates your knees when you walk without your orthotics.
Yes – What you always say to a nap.
Restless leg? – No Doubt
Journey – Your nightly trip to the bathroom.
AC/DC – A device that’s always on too high or too low / a place for “clowns.”
UB40 – How your orthopedic surgeon wants you to stop thinking about yourself because, really, dude, you be sixty-one.
The Cure – What you believe ginger ale is for everything.
The Cult – Best summer of your life.
The Kinks – What your sex life hasn’t had since the cult (but your neck increasingly has).
The Clash – What happened right before your wife became your ex-wife.
Paramore – What caused the clash.
The Moody Blues – The period after the clash.
Dire Straits – What you find yourself in after ignoring all the advice of your physical therapist, gastroenterologist, cardiologist, endocrinologist, orthopedic surgeon, ex-wife, and daughter.
Blood, Sweat & Tears – What has suddenly stopped circulating because of an arterial blockage, what is breaking out all over your clammy body & what are springing to your eyes.
Rush – What you told the ambulance.
Heart – Your answer to “What’s wrong?”
U2 – A question from your hospital roommate, who also has “one of them heart things.”
Iggy Pop – One of the many sugary drinks Dr. Anderson calls “off limits.”
The Police – What you call your daughter, who’s in cahoots with Anderson.
Disturbed – What she calls you.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs – What you give your daughter upon cracking open another ginger ale.
Against Me! – The hospital staff.
Thin Lizzy – That one nurse who’s okay.
Bad Company – Visiting hours.
Poison – The food in this place.
Guns N’ Roses – Your burial wishes.
Grateful Dead – What you’ll be pretty soon.
Hole – Your resting place.
Nirvana – If you’re lucky.