The Doctor is in

The other day I received the quarterly report from my health insurance provider. It itemized the various medical visits I had made for the past three months. As I browsed through the items, I began to realize that I am accumulating quite an impressive portfolio of specialists. Of course, I have a general practice physician, which is where it all begins.

But over the years I seem to have branched out, and my medical tree now has a lot of branches. I have a neurologist, a urologist, a podiatrist, a dermatologist, an otolaryngologist, a physical therapist and a periodontist. Wow. Now that I’ve actually typed that list, I’m a bit amazed that I consider myself a generally healthy person.

We definitely live in an age of medical specialty. It wasn’t always so. Among the enduring memories of my childhood are my visits to our family doctor. His name was Dr. Fisher. He was a bit of a portly man with a gray moustache and wire rim glasses across his nose. He had a jolly laugh and always, I mean always, wore a stethoscope around his neck. I wonder if he slept in that thing.

His office smelled like formaldehyde. He had a figurine model of himself at the front of his desk, next to his name plate. Behind him was a bookshelf filled with medical journals that looked as though they were written in previous centuries. He would often refer to one of them when diagnosing my sickness. His examining room was about the size of a large closet, with room for a padded table and little else. There was a jar full of tongue depressors on the counter, but he never seemed to use them. There were large pictures on the walls of various body parts and bones. They were graphic enough to creep me out, and I tried not to look at them.

But what I remember most is that Dr. Fisher did it all. He treated headaches, tremors, broken bones, he stitched up cuts and bruises, cut the warts off your feet, treated the rash on your leg, gave you some balm to relieve the pain in your mouth after biting your tongue. No specialists needed here. If Dr. Fisher couldn’t handle it, it was time to go directly to the hospital.

My most vivid memory is the time I was playing tackle football with some friends in their backyard. As I lunged to tackle somebody, he rolled over my leg and I felt a terrible pain in my right foot. I removed my shoe and sock and was horrified to see my big toe standing straight up at a right angle to the other four. I went screaming home to show my mom, and shortly after, we got in the car for a trip to see the good doctor.

I remember sitting on his examining table, scared out of my wits. Was I in for major surgery? Would I lose the toe? Would I ever walk normally again? Dr. Fisher stared at my freakish looking toe for a moment, scratched his chin, and then without warning, he grabbed hold of it with his fist and yanked it straight down. I felt a pop, and a click. It happened so fast I didn’t even have time to feel any pain. “There”, he said. “That oughtta do it”.

I looked down in amazement. All of my toes were once again properly aligned. The big toe was a little sore but it wasn’t bad. Not bad at all. The doc would later explain to Mom that it was just a dislocation. I put my shoe on and traipsed out of there as though nothing had happened.

From that point on, I had a new appreciation of Dr. Fisher. I felt as though he was kind of a miracle worker, a super hero. You just don’t find that kind of all purpose, country doctor anymore.

About fifty years later, I had a bad fall off my bicycle. My right shoulder took the brunt of my impact with the road. It hurt badly, and I noticed my shoulder bone was protruding a little higher. This time it was my wife Sharon taking me to the emergency room, where the doctor said my scapula had been slightly displaced. As he worked on it, I was perfectly calm. Not a whimper or a groan. I’d been through this before.

Dr. Fisher would have been proud.