Wednesday, April 11, 2007

health professionals and my family


I went to my sister's house for dinner last night and we had a conversation over the dinner table about our family's run-ins with medical professionals. Here's a few:

1) My sister's dentist told her that her teeth would "see her out". Perhaps he meant this as a compliment, as only dentists can, but to me it conjures up visions of the person doing the autopsy looking down gravely at the corpse, shaking his head, and saying, "Well, she was bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer, but at least her teeth saw her out."

2) When the same sister gave birth to her second child, the attending doctor was a man who had gone through school with her, from ages five to eighteen. Nightmare Scenario #1 - how very awkward. At least, though, as a friend said, he wasn't an ex-boyfriend.

3) My father was operated on for a hernia by a surgeon he had taught at school, in chemistry. This is more nice than weird, in a karma-type way, as the same doctor told my mother that Dad taught him everything he had ever learnt about science.

Looking back and reading this over, I've discovered this is a very random post. But I'll push the "publish" button anyway, for lack of a better one. Has anyone else had strange/nice encounters with medical professionals?

5 comments:

LEstes65 said...

I grew up in hospitals. Once, when about 5 or 6, the two nurses on my ward had the same name as me and my sister. I thought that was the bomb.

My urologist told me stories about his pet turtle while I was going to sleep before surgery. Some have stayed with me to this day.

During my first c-section, one of the docs (a woman) leaned over the blue curtain to tell me I had lovely ovaries. Uh...thank you?

Stacy said...

I hope my ovaries are lovely.

Allie, you are so funny. I love the bit about teeth. I think I would die if someone I knew (a male someone, anyhow) delivered my child.

Jessi said...

My most traumatic medical experience is that my eye doctor tells me on a regular basis (in a very cheerful voice) "Your eyes are getting worse each visit! You're probably going blind someday, Jessica!"

I always just kind of want to hit him over the head with that little black spoon-thing you have to put over your eyes and tell him to stop speaking in exclamation points.

Trish Ryan said...

I once dated an emergency room doctor. One day he called me after work to tell me how a woman he'd given a pelvic exam came back later and asked him out. So many kinds of awkward.

That's when I decided I was not a good candidate to be a doctor's wife.

Allie said...

Lynette (that is your name, right?): Lovely ovaries. Hmmm. How do you respond to a compliment like that?!

Stacy: I know, I totally agree. My sister said she was kind of distracted :) so it didn't bother her TOO much, but me? No way.

Jessica: Ouch. There's a lady at the post office who always talks like that. It makes me wish I had a shell so I could shrink into it.

Trish: I heartily agree. I have way too many health-people in my family to want to be around more of them.