Siling Labuyo: Perfect Genes for a MoCA Test

President Donald Trump’s first medical check-up turned out to be a big deal. Performed by the president’s military doctor, Rear Admiral Ronny Johnson, the medical report was clearly meant to counter a growing narrative that the president is unfit, mentally ill or have some form of mental incapacity due to his age at almost 72 and his displayed abnormal and erratic behavior. Admiral Johnson then gave an hour-long press conference at the White House and declared that the president was in good health. Despite the unhealthy eating habits (junk food and lots of soda) and sedentary life (spend hours every day watching cable TV and 4-5 hours of sleep per night), the Navy doctor gave Trump a clean bill of health, ‘excellent” was the word, and even emphasized that the president mind was “sharp.” Clearly, there was nothing but good news for the “stable genius.” When probed how the president could have such an excellent heath given his predilection for unhealthy foods and lack of physical fitness, the doctor responded that Trump has “great genes.” Like having great genes settles everything much like in Utopia. In truth, the president is slightly obese, has high cholesterol according to his laboratory test and is on statins. To maintain his “buffoon” looks, he takes Propecia daily for his prostate which reportedly gives him that orange tinge on his hair. His dermatological exam was normal but he is treated for Rosacea, an incurable skin disease that causes redness and pus-filled bumps on the face. In other words, his health is average. As a bonus, the president conveniently asked for and got one, a cognitive test. Admiral Johnson picked the Montreal Cognitive Assessment (MoCA) test and Trump apparently scored 30 of 30. Scoring perfect on the MOCA test is like Dr. Jose Rizal getting a “Sobresaliente” in college along with the rest of the class who also got “outstanding.” It’s no big deal unless you score less than 26 then that spells trouble. Any normal person should have no problem passing the test, it’s that simple. Whether Trump took all day to versus the 10 minutes time allotted for it is a different matter. The admiral didn’t say. The single page MoCA test uses five simple words to test his memory skills, words that are easy to remember like “daisy”, “red”, “face”, “velvet”, and “church.” Especially for a guy with rosacea, remembering “daisy red face” after five minutes should be a walk in the park. Velvet and luxury are two things Trump is comfortable with and could easily remember much like remembering the word “church” as in he does not go to one. This particular test is relevant to Trump who can’t remember saying vulgar words, grabbing women by their sexual organs, or helping Donald Jr. craft his meeting memo with Russian personalities. Perhaps Sen. Tom Cotton and David Perdue should also take this test along with Department of Homeland Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen to help them recall the “shithole” meeting with Trump. To test his ability to process and understand visually, he was shown three animal cartoons of a lion, rhinoceros, and a camel. Of course he knew the animals well having watched the “Lion King” cartoon multiple times in between watching Fox News; rode a camel while in Saudi Arabia, and being a Republican in Name Only (RINO), he won’t confuse an elephant to a rhino. Passing this test was reassuring especially after it was widely reported that Trump applauded the delivery of F-52 fighter jets to Norway. The only problem is that F-52 jets are not real and only exist in X-Box’s game “Call of Duty.” For executive functioning, he drew a cube following a sample drawing of a cube on paper. My granddaughter Penny could draw this cube 20 times over in a minute but she’s not the president so let’s get back to Trump who also drew a clock showing time ten past eleven. The doctor didn’t say if Trump asked for standard time or daylight savings, and did not show how Trump’s drawn clock looked like. I’m sure he did not have a hard time with this because all he has to do is remember to have his burger, soda, and fried chicken at ten after eleven and mark it on his watch during six-hour executive time and while engaging in Twitter diplomacy. Trump was asked to repeat “The cat always hid under the couch when dogs were in the room” to test his language skills. That was the hard part. The easy part was asking him for fluency of certain words that starts with the letter “F” for one minute. The test did not specify normal or foul language. Boy, did he ace that one too beginning with a four-letter word, followed by Fox, Friends as in Fox News’ “Fox & Friends,” followed by more four-letter words and ending with a four-letter word. Albeit it was great therapy to let those words out, actually. For abstract stuff, he was able to determine similarities between two objects like banana and orange as fruits. For him to be able to determine that train and bicycle are modes of transportation, perhaps it could help him tell the difference between Kim Jong-un, the leader of North Korea, and Moon Jae-in, South Korean president so he does not have to make statements like “I have good relationship with Kim Jong-on” when he meant the other. At least now we know that Trump is not suffering from “attention deficit” although he always seeks for attention and demands loyalty. The test showed he can focus by repeating five numbers in forward order: 2, 1, 8, 5, and 4; and three numbers in backward order: 7, 4, and 2.This is a good test because Trump is known to dislike reading legislative stuff and critics questioned his ability to understand sausage making in Congress. He also can’t tell the size of the crowd for his inauguration or accept he lost the popular count to Hillary. Well, if Trump can say these five numbers in forward order, and the three for backward order, then his concentration must be “fine.” And lastly, Trump was well oriented as to the date – month, day, and year; where he was and what city. He nailed his White House address in the District of Columbia perfectly on that particularly day. Whether he stays in that address much longer after 2018, is another story. I’m sure Special Counsel Robert Mueller will do another orientation test on Trump when he asks him questions about his Russian connections and financial dealings. For now, the country is reassured that the president is able to recall name of animals, able to count, mastery of the “F” word, deal in abstraction that bananas and oranges are fruits, and that he could recall his daisy red face like the alphabet. It is also reassuring that his orange hair, according to Michael Wolff’s “Fire and Fury” book is not a symptom of a prostate problem but rather from “Just for Men” hair dye that the orange-beige shade can be lighter or darker depending on Trump’s agitation or temperament that day. More importantly, it is good to know and probably a “good model” for the country that it is okay to drink a dozen Diet Cokes daily, eat junk food throughout the day and still has excellent health. Not everyone will have great genes like the president but as a nation we should pray that Donald Trump stays fit in his Levi’s jeans to make that crucial putt sink in the 16th hole at Mar-a-Lago.