Dear Doctor

 

An Open Letter to the Doctors in My Life

Dear Doctor,

By actual count over these some seventy-seven years I have been one of your inmates on no less than fifty occasions in eleven different hospitals covering four states, seen by so many doctors of medicine passing my way that even God has lost track. After a while, and now having doctors younger than my grandson, an old man does make some observations worth sharing.

     One of the many things my father taught me is that if a man has earned the right to be called “doctor’ he has earned the right to be called ‘doctor”. Yeah, okay, he died never having met a woman doctor. I’ve always attempted to treat doctors with the respect my father taught.

     In writing it is called ‘the curse of knowledge’. That is, forgetting the hearer does not know what you know. Never assume the patient knows what you know, they do not. You get the big bucks for knowing that doctor stuff, not me.

     Any of us patient-types is a fool to expect the doctor to be all-knowing. My father died in 1966 of problems which have been quickly and almost routinely dealt with in my life time. A lot more was learned since, and will be learned henceforth. You don’t know it all. You may want me to think you do, but you don’t. And, I have no right to expect you so to do. Things will change. There is more to learn. You’re almost smart enough to be a doctor, so you should be able to learn from the changes.

     We patients really do go through a lot more stuff than the nurses tell you. We change doctors and the new guys don’t know the trouble we’ve seen. I can never expect you to remember everything I’ve gone through, that’s my job. Your job is to be familiar enough with my case to know I gone though a lot of stuff. BTW: If you walk in the door, as one did, not even knowing I was a heart patient, we are both in trouble.

     Don’t ask me what I “want”. I don’t want any of this stuff! Tell me what you want to do and why. That’s why we call you ‘doctor’. I’ll pretend to understand what you’re talking about and do it. And, if you ain’t worried, neither am I.

     All that is fair to ask of you is this: That I believe you care what happens to me. Make us patients feel you care about the outcome and we will all talk about what a great doctor you are wherever you go, as long as you practice, whatever you don’t know.

Respectfully submitted,

David L Lewis