Doctor Curmudgeon®: Let Us Not Resume Smoke Signals!
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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D. FAAFP
Doctor Curmudgeon® staggered out of the exam room, coughing, eyes running: a very sorry sight.
Her office is covered with signs, dire warnings for patients to heed.
These vivid notices tell people to eschew wearing anything with an odor. New patients are beseeched to avoid entering the office, redolent of fragrances. Old patients are repeatedly cautioned about this when appointment reminders are sent out through the ether.
Doctor Curmudgeon® assumes that these memoranda are transmitted through the ether. They can’t possibly arrive in email boxes because people continue to slather themselves with lotions, perfumes, hair products and other preparations that smell! Apparently, these communications are lost and never received.
When Doctor Curmudgeon® has the audacity to politely inquire (through her increasingly scratchy throat) as to why the individual before her is reeking of some offensive odor; she is told that the patient never knew anything about this topic.
Obviously, the posters in the office are not large enough to be seen.
The flashing lights over the door leading from the waiting room into the inner sanctum are not obvious. And that huge placard- ABANDON SCENTS ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE- is to no avail (My apologies to Dante).
Doctor Curmudgeon® is sensitive or allergic or whatever you want to call it …to many aromas (Fortunately, not to the intoxicating bouquet of coffee).
As she reached for a lozenge to soothe her throat, her cluttered mind veered to smoke signals, an early method of communication. The coughing physician was thankful that she did not have to send missives by this means. She would, most likely, have been unable to communicate with anybody. It would have been tolerable if she were the recipient. Doctor Curmudgeon® would have been mountain tops away from the sender. But the poor scent sensitive curmudgeon would have been rendered powerless to respond or to send a message.
Doctor Curmudgeon® would have been in the dark.
This verbose little physician would have been virtually silenced.
With a great sigh, she realized that she must stop cursing the texts appearing on her iPhone, her screamingly overloaded email and the faxes that poured out of the machine, onto the floor, the hallway and the nearby offices.
Although vastly annoyed that patients continue to ignore the scent free atmosphere that she vainly tries to impose upon her office, she must remember to be thankful that she does not have to receive her messages by smoke signal!
Doctor Curmudgeon® is Diane Batshaw Eisman, M.D., a physician-satirist. This column originally appeared on SERMO, the leading global social network for doctors.
SERMO www.sermo.com “talk real world medicine”
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