In my parents’ world, physicians were accorded a godlike status. My parents came of age in an era when benevolent doctors made house calls and stayed for a piece of pie afterwards. My dad called our family doctor by his first name and the doctor knew the names, ages and health history of me and each of my siblings.
We Baby Boomers do not believe that physicians are godlike beings. I’ve read that this might be because Boomers do not respect authority figures or that thanks to the Internet we can now diagnose our own maladies or even because programs like “Grey’s Anatomy” show us that doctors are all too human. I say that this is all nonsense. The reason why we no longer place doctors on pedestals is that once most modern doctors open their mouths to speak the illusion of omniscience is shot.
I speak from experience; like many of my middle aged friends I spend a fair bit of time transporting my elderly mother back and forth to doctors. I generally return home afterwards testy and frustrated, and with my blood pressure spiking.
Will I ever forget the clueless internist who told me she needed to go on-line line to determine the cause of Mom’s bad cough? Curious, I asked the doctor what website she was looking at. “WebMD,” she said. Later in the visit, she asked Mom to please stop coughing. “Whatever you have, I don’t want,” she said. As she squeamishly listened to Mom’s lungs she looked at me. “What do YOU think she has?” she asked.
My favorite recent story is the cardiologist who was delivering some really bad news about the condition of Mom’s heart. Mid-way through presenting us our options, he yawned. My mother and I looked at each other, then back at the doctor. He pretended it never happened and kept going. A moment later he yawned again, and then a third time. “Are we boring you, Doctor?” I asked sharply.
He left the examining room, still yawning, and a nurse came in to schedule some tests. “The Doc sure is tired today,” I said carefully. She nodded. “He always is when he does his rounds on his lunch hour.”
“At the hospital?” I asked.
“At the Hilton,” she answered.
I assume the cardiologist is a good doctor; to maintain my sanity I have no choice but to believe it, but what to make of Mom’s orthopedic surgeon? After she broke her hip last fall, I took her for her follow up visit and the orthopedist went into ecstasies about how great her hip looked. He marveled that there was no swelling and was incredulous that the scar was almost invisible.
“Uh, Doc,” I ventured. “You’re looking at the wrong hip.” He obviously did not believe me, so he looked at her chart and thought for a long time. “Oh,” is what he finally said.
Mom’s rheumatologist is a hard drinker. I learned this from his office manager when I was scheduling a follow-up appointment. “Mmmm-mmmm,” she said, shaking her head dolefully. “You don’t want to come in on a Thursday morning.” She lowered her voice. “Wednesday is his poker night.” She looked to make sure no one was looking, and continued. “Monday mornings are bad too after the weekend. Friday afternoons are no good either,” she said, “he likes to get started early.” She looked at me, nodded towards the doctor and mimed like she was chugging a shooter. “Come in on Tuesday,” she said. “Tuesdays are safe when there is no Monday Night Football.”
We consulted the rheumatologist because thanks to advanced arthritis, one of Mom’s toes was causing her excruciating pain. After a series of X-rays and a manual inspection that ended when I peeled Mom off the ceiling, the rheumatologist decided that the best course was to amputate the toe. “It it’s not there, it can’t hurt,” he said jovially.
On the way home I was silent and furious, Mom was thoughtful. “Thank god I didn’t tell him I have a headache,” she said.