A very unpleasant day

(Typos due to late night use of IPad have now been corrected.) Infelicities or awkwardness of layout due to the primitive nature of IPads have not been corrected. Nor have I yet gained such enlightenment as to guarantee that I 've made no mistakes---substantial or incidental.... //////////// After waiting for nearly two hours, we were shown in to the doctor's office. The man is peculiarly arrogant in a sort of show- off way. He doen't mind telling you how great he is. But, as I think of it, one characteristic of good explainers is that they can operate on several levels at once. Knowing the technical details, they are able to move out of technical vocabulary and work with images or analogies----at the same time they recognize the extent to which their images or anologies are not wholly accurate. ( I complained recently on this blog about a nurse who had a bad anaology to explain memory phenomenon without seeming to realize the weaknesses of her image.) This guy has no such ability to explain, nor I think does any doctor I have ever met. (But,it's also true that I've not had excessive commerce with these businessmen in the health business.....((Apology to my Slovak GP; I don't recall that he was so bad as most of what I've seen here.....)//////////// But what I want to write about is the subtle way in which this arrogant fellow manages to disrespect his patients, at the same time promoting an image/ persona of the knowing professional. //////////////////////// Now I do credit the fellow with, on some level, good intentions, and I am sure that between he and me there is a tremendous cultural gulf. I believe that the pragmatic conventions of his native Spanish must be very different from those of my East- coast accented English. I know no other way to explain how it is that on occasions when I have tried to communicate clearly, his response was silence or the equivalent of a trolley missing a turn. He must maintain a certain superiority which seems to rule out too careful explanation or re- examination of anything he has said. He is rather like a machine which can express some general principles--- good ones, too---- but if you try to understand how a particular judgment was reached, then you get only silence and a blank stare.///////////////////////// Which is all bizarre because the lavish expenditure of time on individual patients is not having the desired effect--- it is not clarifying, but only obfuscating and tiring. /////////////////// But the man had a rather disturbing conversation with my mother about Vitamin C. His language was subtley condescending, or even disrespectful, and my attempt to help my mother out met with silence--- as if I had not spoken at all. /////////////// What I did not say, but evidently would have liked to: "Well look, you asshole, if you are giving us extra time to speak, it is only good manners to repond to what we are saying,,,,,"]/////////////////////////// My cynical side says the guy wants to allow patients generous time so as to say something Herr Doktor deems stupid....and that will give him the satisfaction of knowing his patients are idiots.....to be continued...../////////////////// Why, he asked my mother, have you refused to follow my recommendation that you take so much Vitamin C? My mother explained that when she drinks water before bedtime---which she would have to do if she were to take the recommended dosage---she wakes up wet....//////////////////////// to which his response was to assert, blandly, that Vitamin C is not a diuretic.////// Well, my friend, no one ever said it was! But,note well, as he said that fact, he managed to convey the suggestion that my mother was uninformed, confused....////// thus do the arrogant insult us without using "bad" or taboo words....... ///////Post-script: Friday we visited a rather more cheerful, less overbearing doctor. However, he also kept us waiting two hours before we could see him. It seems to be the local version of a tax.......((Dare I say it? I am going to: When I lived in Slovakia----not the richest country in the EU-----I never had to wait two hours to see a doctor........) ----Well, no, maybe once I did wait--- but I did not have a definite appointment....so, still unlike the USA.......