Doctor Curmudgeon®: A Column About Nothing

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By Diane Batshaw Eisman, MD FAAFP

It was a dark and stormy night when…..ooops! Wrong beginning!

It was many many years ago in the days before HD, voice operated, curved screen, streaming television…when a little show debuted. After it had survived for a long time in the television jungle, it was referred to as a “show about nothing.” Jerry Seinfeld, the star of this program said this was just “nonsense.” And I would add “utter nonsense.”

And so, this week’s muttering may seem to be about “nothing,” but it is actually about something.

For many reasons, such as a computer that was antagonistic to Doctor Curmudgeon® and refused to be accommodating, and actually do what computers do; and various other irritating occurrences, the small, rather untidy, chocolate devouring (and cheese eating) physician, found herself, in those hours away from her patients and the office computer and the regulations and rules and paperwork and prior authorizations…dwelling in the land of nothing.

In the beginning, it was a pleasant place in which to sojourn.

There was time to catch up on journals, mind-candy fiction, working out, snoozing, decorating an easy chair and actually using a telephone for evening fireside chats with friends.

Ah! Well and good, thought Doctor Curmudgeon® as she began to embody the word “relaxation.”

However it was not too long before she realized that this was just too much!

She could not use her home computer. It was away in some ICU being worked on by an IT person. As yet, there was no report on its status.

She found checking her mail on an IPhone was too tedious. Being somewhat of a Luddite, she even found the IPad insufficient for her purpose. No nice big typewriter keyboard to fit her oft clumsy fingers.

She needed that big keyboard wherein she could pound at those keys. She needed that large PC screen that she didn’t have to put awkwardly in her lap or on a table. That great big screen that stood alone…all by itself.

“Nothing?” This was no longer enjoyable.

She wanted to write about things.

Sir Galahad (the Siberian Husky) that actually ran the Curmudgeon home, trotted over with a large paper pad in his mouth and a pencil behind one ear and a pen behind the other ear.
Doctor Curmudgeon® shook her head, quite violently. No! Actually take pen or pencil in hand and write? Ye Gads! That was painful. Her handwriting was too difficult for even her to read. No way.

And writing by hand was no longer comfortable for her

Sir Galahad padded off, shaking his beautiful head.

Doctor Curmudgeon® growled.

And then storm clouds gathered over her house as she waited for the return of her computer.
Not such a complete Luddite…after all…she feared

And she has heard it spoken of as “the power of doing nothing.” Maybe so…but that power is certainly limited!

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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