Old Decathlon Olympics Journal

Saturday Oct. 23: Doctor's

Saturday October 23rd, 2004

I called the doctor an informed him that his medicine changes sucked and were causing me great physical distress. This highly educated, experienced man said, “Give it time.”

“Time for what, doc? For me to be found dead, curled up in a ball on my sofa from the pain I am feeling from the knots in my stomach.”

No, I didn’t say that, but I probably should have. My own doctor of over twenty something years died January 29th this year. A big part of me died with that man. This new doctor has a lot to learn about people. He knows plenty about doctoring, but other than that he is an all-controlling male chauvinist. The only reason I haven’t gone off on him is because he has spent so much time learning to be a doctor he ain’t had much time to learn much else.

For the most part, really smart people are not like plain old regular people. They just aren’t. Can’t be, no matter how hard they want to be, and they just look a little silly when they try.

Doctor’s get paid a lot of money, but they really need it. They really do. They don’t think about spending the way regular people do. And the more money they got, the more money they spend, too.

I couldn’t be a doctor, not because I am not smart enough, but because these men and women, doctors, have to go to bed too early in the evening and get up to early in the morning. They miss so much of what is really going on in the world while being kept ever so busy with masses of sick people.

Doctor’s are just people. Granted really smart people, but just people. Dr. Levine would spend the first thirty minutes discussing world events with me before we ever got around to why I was in his office. I suspect that he talked to a lot of his patients this way. There were no windows in his exam rooms. I offered many times to put a big hole in his wall so he could put a window, but he never took me up on it. He would ask me why I came to see him when I was sick, and I would explain that I was just confirming my own diagnosis. We’d laugh, but he knew I wasn’t kidding, and he also knew that if he wanted me to really take the medicine he’d have to give me a shot.

I went through a particular bad year of being very sick very often, and I was also very particularly poor, but Doctor Levine carried me on his books. Once when I showed up sick I told him that he really needed to keep me alive so that I could eventually pay him. He looked at me with a strange sort of gaze and said, “Maybe it would be better if I just cut my losses.” We laughed.

I miss that man.

No, this new doctor I got has a long way to go before he can be a Dr. Levine. If he don’t start talking better to his wife, and stop making me wait three or four or more hours pass my appointment time before I get in to see him, I suspect he is going to have to go back to work at a hospital some where.