I was asked to repost some old stuff. I think it’s worth noting that some of them will be four years old and there’s a likelihood I’m not going to be compared to Nostradamus when it comes to predicting the future.
| Doctors by admin |
I was forced to go to the doctor the other day. This is the second time that I’ve run out of a prescription while my doctor was away and the covering physician wouldn’t renew the drugs without a visit. Both times I dealt with the same replacement. He’s kind of a odd guy. For starters he has a clipped precise English accent. The accent has likely been muted over the years spent in Canada but its still readily discernable. I always wonder about accents. They can be retained but they can also be obtained. I knew a guy for example who was born and raised in Canada but who moved to Australia in his late teens or early twenties. I can’t remember exactly when he left. But I clearly remember running in to him about ten years later. He had transformed into a g’day mate, shrimp on the barbie, hit the turps, bloody Sheila, beaut of an Aussie.
I was wondering if my replacement doctor would go home to Leeds or Manchester or wherever the fuck he was from and all his homeboys would tell him he sounded Canadian. The good news is that this particular doctor had ended my previous visits with “Do you have any other questions?” So, I waited until we had discussed medical things and sure enough he ended with the offer to field queries. So, I asked him when he was last to his ancestral home and how his accent was received among family and peers. He chuckled and affirmed my suspicion that he was accused of sounding like he was from the colonies. We then spent a few minutes of valuable doctor time debating the strength of particular accents and the attraction of others that are assumed by an immigrant or even a visitor. Like a person of obvious Asian ancestry with a full blown Aussie or English accent, which is oddly cool in my opinion.
The last time he left the door open I asked him about the idea that seven percent of our DNA is made up of viral intruders. I was there to get a wart removed and so a question about viruses was pertinent in my opinion. It caught him off guard though and we wasted another ten minutes during that visit discussing the mapping of the human genome and the moral and scientific options available from the mapping.
I guess I should balance my desire to mess with the doctor with the knowledge that there are people waiting to see him. People that don’t really give much of a fuck about accents. So, if I run into this doctor again I think I need to ask one more question of him and then end the question and answer period out of respect for the other patients in the waiting room. So, I have to make my next question as unexpectedly obscure as possible.
I said this doctor was something of an odd fella and I feel the need to elaborate on that statement. He wasn’t odd because of accent. The accent merely accentuated his oddity. The oddities I’m talking about are twofold, and in my opinion common to a great many physicians. I’m talking about social awkwardness and above average intelligence.
Nerds basically.
Some doctors develop a sense of intellectual superiority that borders on derision, and some doctors insulate themselves in their work and colleagues in an attempt to distance themselves from the mouth breathers that made their childhood and teenaged years a living hell. I think the doctors in the latter description are better suited for research because they haven’t entirely purged themselves of the memories of abuse at the hands of the troglodytes they’re now charged with curing or medicating. I wonder how it would feel to be a doctor and have a patient come to you that beat the snot out of you twice a week for a couple of years in grade school?
Good thing we have the Hippocratic oath I guess.
Still, the desire must be strong to prescribe the asshole a drooling sedative and a bowel cleansing medication so that their childhood nemesis is reduced to being aware they’re uncontrollably shitting themselves in public, but unable to do anything about it. Vengeance is mine sayeth the nerd, if you know what I mean. But a decade of schooling to obtain the letters M.D. after your name likely isn’t worth a brief moment of medically induced karma, and so the schoolyard bullies of the world are probably safe from vengeful doctors.
I think that regardless of which route a doctor chooses to blend in with the herd that they’re still left with daily reminders of just how different they are. I think that doctors see a lot of stupid people. It makes sense that stupid people would hurt themselves more than your average individual and for some strange reason even average intelligence people tend to surrender some of their will and perspicacity as soon as they’re face to face with a physician. As a result, doctors tend to talk to people like they’re border line morons. To be fair, it’s a safe assumption for the most part for the doctor. Its fair because of the surrender of will, where people won’t ask questions and instead nod as opposed to asking for clarity and risking sounding stupid. So doctors tend to talk with you like you’re a child and will continue to do so until you give them an indication that you have some sense of what the fuck is going on.
I’m not saying all doctors fit the nerd description. I’m sure that there’s a doctor out there that played sports, drank beer and maybe even got laid before they were twenty, but I think they’re a rarity. Most doctors studied and were on the debate team. It’s good discipline to instill because there’s an expectation from society that your six A.M. surgical procedure isn’t being carried out by somebody who left the club three hours ago and has been snorting lines and doing tequila shots since then.
In a weird way, the social isolation that future doctors endured as children might be a blessing in disguise. It provides many years of keeping the herd at arms length and that could come in handy when you tell them they have breast cancer or heart disease. I couldn’t imagine how a practitioner of medicine would survive if they were personally invested in each of their patients. So, it helps to have many years of practical training on how to not give a fuck or at least not take every death and disease that befalls the herd member as a personal failure, because no one goes to the doctor unless they broke something, expelled something or just generally feel shitty. A little personal distance comes in pretty handy when people are orifice leaking or when you have to tell them they’re toast.
So I think that the doctors of the world are forced into Isolation by a number of factors. Some of the isolation influences are social in nature and some are sort of self imposed intellectual exclusion. Actually, I guess the isolation phenomena is common to all intellectually adept nerds, like engineers and physicists but that thought makes me wonder about the nerd definition. Are all nerds inherently clever or technical adept or can you be a nerd and a moron? If nerd means socially awkward, poorly dressed, and weird then I know lots of stupid people that are nerds. But, if I.Q. above the average is how nerd is defined then the club is a fuck of a lot smaller.
Real nerds have prescription pads and live on the lake I think. I bet there is a direct correlation between nerds and real estate. Nerds don’t live in the trailer park as a rule and they prefer gated communities if at all possible so I’m guessing my idea of nerd has them in the higher real estate bracket. I wonder if a successful doctor nerd has ever had heart palpitations when the new neighbor turns out to be cranially challenged jock just like the ones he thought he left behind in high school? I’m guessing its happened.
Anyway, the next time you see a doctor remember that you have to give them a chance. Say something reasonably intelligent and they won’t talk to you like you’re a ten year old. Use the fucking google and understand some of the symptoms or physiology related to your illness or injury, but be careful to not self diagnose. For some reason doctors seem to appreciate the understanding but not the diagnosis. It’s like they have hurt feelings over you thinking you can do their job for them.
One last thought. Never turn down pain killers. You may not need them right at the moment but they’re nice to have if need them and another doctors appointment needs a two week notice. Lock them up and dispose of them in an appropriate manner when they’re apparently no good anymore but never turn them down.
May the force be with you.
I thought a nerd ending would be appropriate even though now it’s not technically the end anymore. Fuck sakes………. Beam me up.