Doctors

When I was a little girl our doctor's name was Dr. Payne.  You can already see the problem.  I don't think people had health insurance back then and my mom's rule of thumb was that you didn't go to the doctor until you had been sick for three days to make sure you were really sick, by which time you probably were on the mend and didn't need to go to the doctor.  I fell off the back porch and broke my arm when I was three years old and, not knowing the severity of it, my dad had me exercise it to try to get over the discomfort. After three days I went in for X-rays and got a cast on it.

Dennis's childhood doctor was named Dr. Mullarky.  He lived up to his name also.  On our honeymoon Dennis had a relapse of an inner-ear infection, Labrinthitis, that had put him in the hospital about a year before. He called Dr. Mullarky, told him we were on our honeymoon and he was so dizzy he couldn't sit up. Dr. Mullarky laughed for five minutes before he prescribed some medicine that made Dennis sleep for almost twenty-four hours of our three day vacation.  I didn't think it was that funny.

When we lived in Oklahoma City our neighbor was a veterinarian.  He was very accommodating when we needed minor procedures, and handy, to boot.  Dennis was getting allergy shots at the time and Tom would come by on his way home from work and give them to him.  Dennis said it was fine except for Tom holding him by the scruff of the neck to keep him still.  (Just kidding!)

It was great to have Tom close by when we really had a minor, but painful, emergency on a Sunday morning.  Jake, our youngest son, and I had been making snowmen out of marshmallows the day before and I guess we didn't clean up very well.  We had used toothpicks for the arms and one was on the floor and when Dennis walked through the kitchen he got to a toothpick jammed under his toenail. Needless to say, he was not amused. Or quiet. Or able to walk.  Dr. Tom to the rescue.  I guess he had had a lot of experience getting thorns and things out of paws in the past.

The kids' pediatrician, Dr. B., was a friend of ours and went to our church.  On Sundays and Wednesday nights there was usually a line of patients after the service waiting to have stitches removed or questions answered.  If I had had any illusions left of doctors being "holier than thou", Dr. B. quickly dispelled them.  He was always joking and when Jake needed tubes in his ears for ear infections but I was resisting, Dr. B. said "Oh, lets forget about it, then.  We'll get him the best hearing aids they make."  And when Josh needed stitches in his lip when he was nine, Dr. B. said "Josh, do you know any cuss words?"

I don't think doctors get to do that kind of thing anymore, with lawsuits and all.  I'm not sure any doctors want to, anyway.  It is nicer for the doctor if he gets to have an evening out or a day at church without people trying to make him work.  I heard one doctor got around that by asking people who wanted his medical opinion in a social situation to disrobe so he could examine them.

There was a time that it seemed to me that doctors were somehow "more" than the rest of us; not quite real. The first time I went to a doctor and he was younger than me I was appalled, and of course now that I have given birth to one and broken a bread board on his behind when he was about eight when he sassed me (Oh, please! It was a little bread board and had a crack in it already from being in the dishwasher and he was wearing heavy jeans anyway and he deserved it!) I don't have that awe of doctors that I used to.

It's not that I don't have respect for doctors any more.  I probably respect them more now that I know more of what they have to go through to get to be doctors and how much work they do to keep up their skills and how often they go in at three in the morning to do emergency surgery and stay all day for the rest of their patients.  It's just that when I am arguing with my son about something or other and he says "Mom, who has the M.D.?"  I say, "Josh, who has decades more experience than you do?  Besides", I tell him, "You're not too big to spank, you know!" 

There has to be a bread board around here somewhere.