Dinner and a Story
...medical that is
from 
JoeUser Forums
JoeUser Forums
Regular kids eat regular meals. Being a doctor, my kids eat meals peppered and spiced pungently and profusely. The bitterness, the sweetness. They're old enough to hear it all, now. But once in a while I hear, "Not at dinner dad." "Can't it wait." "Pulleeasse." Dinner is for sharing and mom's no help. She's a nurse. Oblivious, we don't even know we're doing it.
OK, so maybe they didn't need to know about that lady I'd see every couple of years. She'd complain of navel discomfort. I'd take a pair of tweezers and pull a out a core of lint that was 3/8" wide by about three inches long. A visual artist, she'd often have visions that no psychiatrist had ever been able to explain. I've never seen her art, but I often imagine it.
Then there was Road Kill, also a regular at the local soup kitchen. He'd gotten his name because he used to wear...yep that's right.
The lady with about a month of vaginal discharge due to a tampon, forgotten and lost, also didn't avoid mention. The gangrenous toes, The pelvic floor cramping treated with botox so the newlywed could have intercourse with her husband. The proper way to remove an ingrown toenail by spreading iris scissors repeatedly under it. The alcoholic with the right middle lobe pneumonia from breathing in his own vomit. The process of disimpacting someone with intractable constipation. The IV addict with abscesses over his arms. The way to blow a foreign body out a child's nose by doing a "kiss-off". The guy with the untreated dental abscess that had gotten a bone infection and had to have part of his jaw replaced. It goes on.
Against all odds, recently, my son met a girl in his careers class whose mother is also a doctor at a local walk-in clinic. The first thing he asked her was "Does your mother gross you out about work at the dinner table?" As she nodded, he chuckled, "Yeah, my dad too."
OK, so maybe they didn't need to know about that lady I'd see every couple of years. She'd complain of navel discomfort. I'd take a pair of tweezers and pull a out a core of lint that was 3/8" wide by about three inches long. A visual artist, she'd often have visions that no psychiatrist had ever been able to explain. I've never seen her art, but I often imagine it.
Then there was Road Kill, also a regular at the local soup kitchen. He'd gotten his name because he used to wear...yep that's right.
The lady with about a month of vaginal discharge due to a tampon, forgotten and lost, also didn't avoid mention. The gangrenous toes, The pelvic floor cramping treated with botox so the newlywed could have intercourse with her husband. The proper way to remove an ingrown toenail by spreading iris scissors repeatedly under it. The alcoholic with the right middle lobe pneumonia from breathing in his own vomit. The process of disimpacting someone with intractable constipation. The IV addict with abscesses over his arms. The way to blow a foreign body out a child's nose by doing a "kiss-off". The guy with the untreated dental abscess that had gotten a bone infection and had to have part of his jaw replaced. It goes on.
Against all odds, recently, my son met a girl in his careers class whose mother is also a doctor at a local walk-in clinic. The first thing he asked her was "Does your mother gross you out about work at the dinner table?" As she nodded, he chuckled, "Yeah, my dad too."
