Paging Dr. Bowwow
So, this morning as I drank my Earl Grey, I thumbed through the Yellow Pages studying the listings for family physicians. I don’t like the one I’ve got now and am contemplating making a switch. Good doctors are hard to find. I’m not talking about medical competence here, but patient/doctor compatibility — an examining room manner that doesn’t raise my blood pressure higher than it already is and the feeling I’m more than just Chart #F-178: Midlife female with hypertension and anxiety attacks.
Up until this spring, I had a wonderful physician whose gracious demeanor and personal interest in his patients was as good or better a medicine than anything from a pharmacy. However, he moved to another city and I wish I’d packed up and followed him instead of getting stuck with the person who took over his practice here — whom, as aforementioned, I’m in the process of jettisoning.
Well, I didn’t get very far with the Yellow Pages, but the internet intervened to solve my problem. I don’t need a physician, I need Fido. I ran across a news feature discussing the uncanny ability of dogs to sniff out diseases in people — cancer, infections, diabetes, heart conditions, respiratory problems and a host of other ills.
All you canines out there, listen up now. This is the career opportunity of a lifetime. Americans are fed up with the medical bureaucracy whose P&L statements are more important than their patients’ well-being. We’re tired of shelling out big bucks for a doctor with bad bedside manners who can’t correctly diagnose a wart on a pickle, much less what’s wrong with us. We despair of ever seeing any sort of national health plan to insure that everybody receives the care they need. So get ready to hang that shingle outside the ol’ dog house because we need your TLC and intuitive expertise.
Now this would be an office visit I could anticipate with pleasure and a practitioner with whom I could feel totally at ease. Warm and fuzzy, soft brown eyes, a caring and gentle manner, quiet, attentive, sensitive – and a diagnostic whiz, too. Payment arrangements would be a lot simpler and kinder to the pocketbook as well – maybe a 20-pound bag of Purina or a couple of 16-oz. T-bone steaks? Hey, sounds like a good deal to me.
–phoebe kate