I miss my childhood doctor. You really felt he’d done a proper job after he’d peered into and probed every orifice, depressed your tongue with a wooden spatula leaving a splinter half way down your throat, and then sent you on your way clutching a bottle of medicine that tasted like a combination of nitric acid and cat’s pee and was the colour of a strawberry Mivvi.
It’s all computerised now. He tinkles on his keypad while firing questions at you.
“Have you ever sat near to a bonfire?”
“Have any of your ancestors ever died?”
“Have you ever eaten a doughnut?”
“Do you run a marathon every day, once a week, once a month, once a year or never?”
“OK, the computer says that you have a 10% chance of dying before you leave the surgery, a 20% chance of at least one leg falling off before next Christmas and a 50% chance of surviving the next meeting of the coven. My advice to you is …. dammit, the computer’s crashed … you’d better come back in a year’s time. NEXT!”
Stumble It!
5 Comments
My doctor has never asked me a single one of those questions. I must show him this post the next time I am in. Considering my state of extreme health, that might be a while.
They do tend to tinkle in front of the computer now, though, I have noticed. Even so, they still never seem to know the answers to the questions. LIke, the last time I was in, the triage nurse asked me all about why I was there and took down my symptoms, etc. etc. put it all in the computer. Then the doctor came in, sat down at the computer and asked me all the same questions, which made me wonder a. can he read b. does he want to find out if I have changed my answers in the last five minutes and c. doe he just not trust the triage nurse’s typing among other things….
This was a ‘well man’ clinic so I’m hoping not to have to pop in to the surgery too soon either. My blood pressure tests as documented last week were, apparently, fine – you could have knocked me down with a feather!
Did you have to ‘cough’?
No … but I did giggle though.
My childhood doctor? Weighed approximately 300 pounds, yet found it quite necessary to tell me i was very fat, and put me on a diet when i was 13 years old. i’d have slapped him if i thought i could have gotten away with it…
I find the number of obese health care workers quite upsetting. My doctor is very slim and the nurse is …. *checks blood pressure*
My childhood doctor used to hand out jellybeans
… and then handed you over to his best friend the dentist I suppose.
Oh how I laughed DP! Your the best tonic there is! Who needs a doctor when they can read your blog posts? However, try as I might, I don’t remember the medicine that tasted like cat pee…hmm, might be my lousy memory..
How kind xxx. Lucky memory I reckon. Still planning your hols?
Trying to.