My Doctor

by Madeleine Kando

I commiserate with a friend at my health club about all sorts of things. That’s one of the advantages of relating to someone on a ‘locally specific basis’. You know, someone you only meet at the supermarket, or when you get your coffee at Starbucks every morning at 9 am. It’s a safe way of letting off steam because you know you won’t see that person anywhere else that day.

My locally specific friend talks a lot about her ‘doctor’. She is so enamored with him that her choice of words borders on adoration. ‘He is very very famous, you know, MY doctor. He is in the paper and on t.v. He really likes me.’

I thought of her when I went to see MY doctor yesterday. Of course he is not MY doctor at all. He is so many people’s doctor that his three secretaries have to go through terrible contortions to try to cram the enormous amount of patients’ charts onto the shelves behind their neatly lined up workstations.

One of them was wearing a Micky Mouse hat with a big red ribbon that matched her red sweater stretched tight over her expansive bosom. It was Halloween, you see. As I was waiting, I was watching her step onto a wobbly stool, one hand holding a chart, the other holding onto a cabinet. She was engaging in her daily struggle to squeeze one more patient onto the already overstuffed shelf.

MY doctor is a very famous spine specialist. He doesn’t know my name and I doubt he remembers any of his patients’ names. To him, I am an L5 with a bulging disk.

I have been whisked into one of the many examination rooms, waiting for MY doctor to come in. My ‘friend’ at the club would be proud of me. He only made me wait an hour.

He comes in, shakes my hand without looking up from the sheet that he is holding in his hand. He asks ‘how are you?’ in a tone that does not expect an honest answer. So, when I answer him truthfully that I have seen better days, he looks up, a bit surprised.

He is very laconic, with a flat affect. I recognize this as a trick of the trade, a way to discourage patients from asking too many questions. That would risk extending our meeting and an L4 with narrowing disk space is waiting in the next examination room. I know how she must feel and with a guilty conscience I ask MY doctor to at least look at the expensive MRI that I brought with me.

Ten minutes later I am back in the hall, wondering what happened. I had a shitload of questions, but somehow the person that I was talking to in there did not seem very interested in me. I had the distinct feeling that my condition didn’t pose a special challenge. He was either thinking of his next patient or what he would eat for lunch.

I was really open to the possibility of getting to know him. I could have told my ‘friend’ at the club, that I too had a nice, famous doctor. But I think there is a point in some doctors’ career where the patient load reaches a critical mass, where there are just too many patients squeezed on a shelf. They must start blending together, like pureed potatoes.

I don’t feel terribly sorry for MY doctor. He has chosen the path of least resistance to fame and glory. But his secretaries… well, that’s different. I have a suspicion that my chart will start gathering dust. I can already hear the sigh of relief when, instead of stepping onto her wobbly stool, the big bosomed secretary will toss my chart in the wastebasket. Phew! One less potatoe to worry about. leave comment here